For these times: Four Days of (hopefully!) Enlightened Activity

 

Recently, I attended a four-day online retreat (more technically, a drubchen/sgrub-chen/གྲུབ་ཆེན།/”great accomplishment”, but bear in mind that drubchens as I’ve come to know them, last considerably longer; ten days or more) dedicated to the goddess/bodhisattva Tārā/Drolma (sgrol-ma/སྒྲོལ་མ།), a deity close to my heart for a variety of reasons that are not necessarily reasonable (for instance, why or how does such a figure arise anyway and why or how would one come to hold such a figure “closely”?) but will become clear shortly.

The drubchen was carried out under the auspices of Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche and his Nalandabodhi organization in Seattle, but in coordination with Nalandabodhi International, the Karmapa Center and associated groups. While in general, the focus on Tara is to reflect on her being as representative as the vanquisher of “the eight great fears” as the embodiment of the Buddha’s enlightened activity, the impetus behind accomplishing such practices is for the well-being/enlightenment of ourselves and all sentient beings. This is often, I think, simply seen as “merely” recited in many of our minds without due consideration and becomes formulaic. It is not.

Indeed, as I think will become clear in the following, there was an urgency to these past four days of practice in which Rinpoche stressed that this drubchen was very much to be seen as a concerted effort to encounter the fear surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. As such, this was paramount, I believe, in the collected sangha that took part. If was palpable, even over Zoom. 

It also served to underscore how much the bodhisattva motivation is integral to Vajrayana praxis, and it is this emphasis that Rinpoche stressed in his concluding thoughts Saturday night.

He stressed that, having taken the bodhisattva vow (to defer enlightenment until all beings have entered nirvana and to work for the benefit of all sentient beings) means that “we don’t give up on any sentient being.” In committing to developing and realizing the Mind of Enlightenment/bodhicitta, we don’t give up on any being, no matter how obstinate, belligerent, or seemingly hateful.

We don’t flee from turbulent times; if we cannot handle the turbulence here, how could we ever uphold a vow to enter the hell realms in order to benefit beings in them? As Rinpoche said, in turmoil we find enlightenment (cf. Gampopa’s Third Dharma: ལམ་འཁྲུལ་བ་ཞིག་པར་བྱིན་གྱིས་རློབས། །/”May the path eliminate/dissolve confusion”)

As he pointed out, we think this period is so especially tumultuous, but it is our own insistence on labeling it as “the worst” and so on. We lose ourselves in conceptualization and clinging to labels and images. This merely creates more confusion.

If we generate true compassion, genuine bodhicitta, then we grow lighter and better equipped to meet the challenges of the most difficult situation. “Welcome to samsara!”

And it’s just this: samsara and nirvana aren’t places to come from or go to. Bring your bodhi-mind up and there’s nirvana (at the very least, there’s your good heart, good nature, and genuine love.) Take that with you when you read the news or have political discussions with friend with whom you disagree. See if that doesn’t ease the strain.

For Buddhists and non-Buddhists, this is given to all of us. We don’t like being angry, but we – most of us, I think – posit the blame elsewhere. I’ve said this elsewhere on this blog, and to folks face to face; sure, anger has its usefulness. It tells us we are faced with a situation we don’t like, perhaps one that is “objectively wrong” (injustice, acts of violence, and so on.)

However, if we let our anger metastasize by clinging to it and allowing it to consume us, we lose ourselves. People question I don’t “shut someone down” or why I continue to be friends with folks who have extremely opposing views. The short answer is that we are more than our political views.

I do oppose many aspects of the current administration, for example. I have friends who think the current White House is swell and diagnose me with “TDS”. That’s fine. I don’t expect to the change their views.

However, I also know that there is much more to people than that context. Does it mean that they will vote for things that I don’t like and vice versa? Sure. But if they needed help or just someone to talk to, I’m still going to be there.

If we lose our empathy and our compassion, then we become less human and humane. Not to get all Buddhist (but this is what this post is about), but bodhicitta is in everyone. It is our genuine mind state. It does seem to get obscured by our clinging to adventitious emotional states, but it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s always present, even if we are not.

It takes work to find it and keep in clean. I have quite a few friends who seem to do that. I hope I get lucky now and again, myself.

I write this because Rinpoche’s words brought clarity to something that’s been on my mind and which I struggle to articulate. This is why kalyanamitras (“spiritual friends”) are so important: we receive a turning word (or several) and the light turns on.

 

Click!

 

As for how this can assist in the quelling of fears from the pandemic or other existential threats (indeed, this is part of the Venerable Lady Tārā’s skill set), consider that a stable mind, a compassionate heart, and a desire to put the needs of others first, draws our self-interest down to where there is less room or no room at all, for fear.

Whether you use some form of lo-jong (བློ་སྦྱོང/blo-sbyong)/mind training or metta-bhavana or whatever works for you in opening the hear to unconditional love for other beings, you realize in degree to what measure you become unstuck on  yourself. Just as I think anger is mostly frustration that comes from ourselves (we don’t get what we want, we feel slighted, we are swept up by self-righteousness and all this can lead too easily to worse mental states), just so when we practice generosity, patience, compassion, and genuinely generate a motivation to love others (all others; even those with whom we disagree or have convinced ourselves are bad or evil), we free ourselves from our own fears. Fear is often only fear for oneself. It need never be a ruling condition.

 

Postscript: Clarifying my relationship with Buddhism(s)

 

While I do enjoy community, my allegiance to Tibetan Buddhism is not without a question of what appropriateness. Each person has to find their own approach and mine has changed over the years. Many years ago, even as I was delving deeper into Indo-Tibetan traditions, I questioned my own intention and if this was just some form of cultural appropriation or merely play-acting.

For the cultural side of it, I don’t think so. I could never throw on a chuba or take up traditional thangka painting authentically, for example. But I have found studying the Tibetan language illuminating, and in some cases, necessary, for engaging the textual and pedagogic traditions. This isn’t merely for intellectual purposes, learning the language brings the text alive and it speaks to you directly, uniquely (same with Pali).

In terms of what I call “play-acting”, the performative aspects of Tibetan Buddhism are well-known. But there’s a reason to just about every gesture, every symbol, and these are deeper than merely imagining stuff. I gave voice to these concerns recently in an email to a dear friend of mine with which I’ll conclude this entry.

“As it is, to be honest, I don't keep up with my Tibetan practices. Garchen Rinpoche gave a Peaceful Padmasambhava empowerment last month and I relished it, to be sure (plus, it was cool seeing old friends on Zoom). The Tara drubchen that just wrapped with Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche was lovely, as well, but I find the performative aspect of Tibetan Buddhism distracting on the one hand, and then, immensely pleasurable, on the other. But as I get older, I'm more inclined to spend an hour a two with Mind, sans elaboration. 

A lot of people would say I'm probably on the fast track to Avici because I've broken my samayas, but my motivation remains that my meager, lousy meditation practice is for the benefit of others as well as myself. I guess the counter would be that by not relying on the support of the lama, yidams, buddhas, bodhisattvas, and dharma protectors, I'm not making the most of the gifts of Tibetan Buddhadharma, but I think that sells everybody short; if those worthies are ever-present, then whether I engage in the generation stage or not, is immaterial; they're there. The "if" is a qualification, for sure: so many practitioners of TibBuddhism use the "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" reasoning to justify a kind of animistic attachment to the supports, the images, the mantras, and so on and I think, personally, miss the power of the hermeneutics of those supports. In other words, they reify by clinging to images and performative devotional proceedings, the very processes that the lamas would say you don't do. 

I guess I find there's a lot of double-thinking in Tibetan Buddhist practice and why I'm more drawn to vipassana/vipashyana (though the approaches do differ between so-called Mahayana practices and Theravada). Joshua Eaton used to ask me if I thought there was a difference between vipassana and Chan/Zen and/or Mahamudra/Dzogchen; I said no, and called up something that Roshi Bernie Glassman said many moons ago in talking about Zen: "Zen is the Mahamudra, it is vipassana..." It was refreshing to hear something that I've felt during my engagement with Buddhism as a whole supported. 

Mind is mind. As Lama Tharchin Rinpoche once said, "there's not my mind, there's not your mind, there's only Mind." A kind of Cittamatrin declaration from a great Dzogchen master, but there you are. Or I think about something HHDL said at the beginning teachings of the Kalachakra in 2012, "if you generate bodhicitta, you don't need to do complicated practices, you don't need to do phowa." More recently, Stephen Batchelor mentioned that he kind of came to the same conclusion as I did, years after having been a Gelug monk and interpreter and a Korean Zen monastic. He did a Goenka course and said that was the experience he had heard talked about in the other traditions but he hadn't had. 

I'll admit that I don't want to impute motivations that aren't there to traditions I love very much and have great admiration for (I started as a fledgling Zen-bo, and stumbled happily into the dharma fields in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism), but a lot of it does seem to be more involved than necessary. And I love dinging the bells, whacking the drums and blowing horns and conch shells! And there's much to be said for mantra, but I think over the past decade, the more time I've spent with the Pali canon, the more I feel these are cultural accumulations that while useful (I believe they genuinely are), may not be the most expedient means to liberation as advertised.”