An essay by the co-founder of Tibet House New York and the first Western Tibetan monk
An article about meditation by Neale Donald Walsh, Author of Conversations with God, reproduced with permission from Conversations with God Foundation.
from Steve Bhaerman, from of the Laughmore Society which promotes healing laughter and transformational comedy
To deal with feelings of anger and fear and frustration, we can start by finding relationality. As the Lakota Indians say, Mitakuye oyasin: "All beings are my relatives." When I'm particularly mad at George Bush and company for warmongering, I remember that in another lifetime he was my mother, and that even the most evil people were at some point my errant siblings. That immediately takes a certain edge off the anger.
The second step is to realize that we too have the potential to be demonic. Given certain conditions and confusions and insecurities and fears, any of us could do bad things. It might start with an imperceptible change; we wouldn't think we were being bad - just a little naughty here and there. Pretty soon we would take it too far and be really bad. People can become deluded like that.
Third, we develop real sympathy for the people who are doing harm, because if they bomb people, if they pollute, if they poison the food chain, they will have the bad karma of having banned so many=20 people.
By taking these three steps - finding one's relation to all beings, acknowledging the evil potential in one-self, feeling sympathy for the evil person - one gets the strength and energy to be an activist and to try, by voting and organizing, to stop harm caused by others. This is cool heroism: developing a tolerant, deliberate, and wise energy.
People are afraid that if they let go of their anger and righteousness and wrath, and look at their own feelings - and even see the good in a bad person - they're going to lose the energy they need to do something about the problem. But actually you get more strength and energy by operating from a place of love and concern. You can be just as tough, but more effectively tough. It's like a martial art.
My wife once met Morihei Ueshiba, the man who founded aikido. After he did a demonstration where he left about seventeen big bruisers on the ground, she asked what his secret was for disarming his attackers without harming them. He giggled and told her, "A long time ago, I realized that every person was just my sister, my brother, my cousin. All those guys lying on the floor are my brothers, you are my little sister! Everybody is just one family." That's cool heroism.
To conquer hate, you have to find unshakeable tolerance. The seventh-century Buddhist saint Shantideva was the great master of that. The sixth chapter of his Guide to Bodhisattva's Way of life (Bodhicharyavatara) is considered to be a special magical precept from Manjushn, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, for replacing anger with tolerance. The essence is: Why get upset if you can do something about something? And if you can't do something about it, then why get upset? Anger, the text says, comes from feeling uncomfortable because something you don't want to happen is happening, or something you want to happen is not happening. Then you lose your good cheer - your joyousness in just being - and start operating from a place of misery and anger.
When you understand interconnectedness, it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying. But people will not be more afraid of hating than dying as long as they hold the worldview that death is the final conclusion of the self, of all chains of causation and consequence that they could be connected to. That's the problem for spiritual nihilists, or materialists. You don't have to believe in future lives to be a Buddhist since Buddhism isn't merely a belief system. But in the mind-reform practice, if you're going to deal with your own explosive and obsessive impulses at a really deep level, then the sense of being locked into a potentially endless continuity of consequence - what I call "infinite consequentiality" - gives you the power in the moment to find a deeper resource to use against those seemingly uncontrollable impulses. If you take the view that you're an infinite prisoner of those forces - that if you don't deal with them now, you'll have to in future lifetimes - then you will not make the excuse "I can't do it." You're going to have to do it. It's what Milarepa said: He was grateful he had the awareness of hell - of infinite negativity. He had killed many people with black magic in his youth, before he turned to the dharma, but understanding the dangers of hell gave him the power to become a buddha and escape these consequences.
We all have the potential to be killers; realizing that is the key. Years ago some academics and I did a study of religious violence. We found that the people who are the most violent are those who are incapable of embracing their own potential for evil. By projecting their shadow, their evil, onto the other, they justify their violence. They think they're emphasizing their purity, or restoring their purity, by destroying someone else.
If there were a really bad person who was about to launch nuclear weapons or engage in germ warfare, the most compassionate thing would be to have somebody take him out without hurting innocent people. In the Theravada ethic, you say, "We don't know the real story here. I don't know whose karma is what, so I can't get involved." But in the bodhisattva ethic, if you see someone about to kill a bunch of people, you have to stop him or you're an accomplice. If you don't stop him, not only are you letting others lose their lives, but you're also harming the killer because he's going to have very bad karmic effects. You try to stop him without killing, but if you have to kill, you do. You get bad karma, too, but because you are acting out of compassion, not hatred, the good karma will outweigh the bad.
Surgical violence - killing the one to save the many - is part of the bodhisattva ethic. The problem with American-style warfare since World War ll is that we've relied on carpet bombing - civilian bombing. Civilian bombing is a kind of terrorism in itself, and there's nothing surgical about it. It's just blanket annihilative violence. And that produces this terrible blowback of terrorism and people filled with revenge and hatred. It incites more violence, whereas surgical violence had better be surgical -aiming to heal.
So our outer work is to resist and protest and try to maintain clarity and speak out forcefully against the kind of violence that kills so many innocent people. Our speaking out forcefully will be more effective because we won't really be angry, we'll be fierce. We'll realize that we can get greater energy out of love and joy than out of hatred.
Hatred is so off balance. You can blow your adrenals in one minute, then you're shaky and weak. But if you're joyful, you'll get an endless source of energy.
Robert A. F. Thurman, PhD., named as one of Time Magazine's 25 Most Influential People of 1997, has been a college professor and writer for 30 years, and holds the first endowed chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in America (Jey Tsong Khapa Chair, Columbia University). He is the co-founder and president of the non-profit organization, Tibet House New York. He was the first Western Tibetan monk, a student for over 35 years and a friend of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is the author of several books, including Inner Revolution and Essential Tibetan Buddhism and is acknowledged as a key figure in American Buddhism. Thurman lives in New York City with his wife, Nena, who is managing director of Tibet House New York. Thurman also is the father of five children including actress Uma Thurman. His special interest is the exploration of the Indo-Tibetan philosophical and psychological traditions, with a view to their relevance to parallel currents of contemporary thought and science.
Full information is linked for you at http://www.greatmystery.org
One of the questions I am often asked when I am on the road is about meditation. How do I do it, and what technique(s) do I recommend?
When you meditate, the first hint is to stop trying to do anything. That is, don't even try to meditate! The art of meditation is the art of letting go -- of everything -- including the hope, dream or expectation of having a good meditation. Just sit there. Be quiet with yourself. Don't try to block out noises and other distractions. Rather, make them part of your experience. Bring them in. Include them. But don't think about them as "noises" or "distractions." That's a judgment. That's the mind working; deciding things about it. Don't decide. Just listen. Hear the noises, but "pay them no mind." Make nothing of it. Let me say that again. Make nothing of it.
Remember when we were kids, and we'd just barely mention something to another person who was sensitive, and they'd say back to us, "SOOO??? You wanna MAKE SOMETHING OF IT?" And we'd back down, right? Because we DIDN'T want to "make something of it." Well, now it's the same way with your mind. The trouble with your mind is that it's like that inquisitive little kid -- until it's silenced. It wants to "make something" of every piece of data that comes in. Noises, sights, smells. Everything. Now it's up to you to challenge your mind to STOP that. Every time your mind connects with an outside stimulus, just say, "Yeah, so what? You wanna make something of it?" Then your mind will GET that there's NOTHING GOING ON HERE. That a noise is just a noise. A smell is just a smell. That's all it is and it's not anything more. It doesn't have to interfere with anything. Anything. Not even your meditation. Better yet, it can be PART of your meditation!
But it can never be part of your meditation if you are trying to do something in your meditation called "be quiet." The object of your meditation is not to be quiet. It is to be still -- which is not the same thing at all. Being still means simply being "with" whatever's going on. So be with the traffic sounds and whatever other noises are out there. Hear them, maybe even count them. Categorize them, if you want to. Then, set 'em aside and get back to simply listening to your breathing. Go back to your breathing and just listen to that. You'll block out the other sounds automatically. But not if you become annoyed by them, distracted by them.
Never be annoyed or distracted by life. It is just life, happening. Let the meditation happen as part of it. I know people who could sit down in the middle of Times Square and meditate. Within 30 seconds they're gone. Out of it. Spaced. I mean, that's how people see it. Actually, they've moved deep into meditation upon the moment. So deep the moment no longer runs against the grain of the meditation, but becomes what the meditation is all about. You see?
Now, then, as you begin to concentrate on your breathing -- which you can always hear, no matter what is going on around you -- start also to focus your attention on a spot between and just above the eyes. Focus on that spot. There are a lot of ways to get there. Some people like to begin with an "inventory," focusing on all other areas of their body first, as a means of achieving total relaxation. So they focus on their toe, for instance. Then their ankle. Then the leg, the knee, the thigh, and so on, in this way "being with" every part of their physical body. They watch each part relax. They may even order it to. That's fine. That's okay. That's one way to achieve relaxation.
I am often asked about meditating to receive answers to questions. I want to tell you that it would be very unusual for you to "get an answer" to questions while meditating, because meditation is not about the Universe, or God, answering your questions. Meditation is about getting in touch with Who You Really Are -- after which all questions go away.
If you go into meditation with a question on your mind, you miss the point of meditation. Empty your mind, then go into meditation. Forget your questions, then go into meditation. Require no "answers," then go into meditation. Meditation is not about "getting answers." Meditation is about going to a place where the answers and the questions are one.
Do you understand this? Do you hear what I am saying? It is out of the Void that an answer will come, if an "answer" comes at all, not out of the Space of Expectation. If you expect an answer, you will not get one. That is because meditation is not a mental process É it is the absence of mental process! Actually, there is no "right" way to meditate. Just do what works for you. But finally, when you feel you've become "unwound" and are just sitting there, being with the moment, then begin to draw your attention to this little space I've talked about behind the center of your forehead, above and between the eyes.
Interesting things can happen when you do that. Don't be surprised if you encounter a dancing blue/white "flame," or light. Don't be surprised if you are overcome, as you become immersed in that light, with a feeling of well-being, warmth and oneness that can only be described as Ecstasy. Not happiness. Not even joy. But pure Ecstasy. Peace. Unity.
For more information on Neale Donald Walsh, his books Conversations with God or the Conversations with God Foundation , visit their web site at http://www.cwg.org/
Dear Friends:
Happy New Year! Welcome to that teeming, bubbling stew of infinite potentials called 2004. Just think. In less than ten months, we will have four more years of the same old President -- or we will have chosen ourselves a brand new precedent. Will we give in to hopelessness, apathy, fear, and the belief that the world sucks and there is nothing we can do about it? Or will we apply our skills, our wit, our wisdom and our consciousness to bring down the Irony Curtain and take those first steps toward a government of the people, by the people, for the people, where our government does OUR bidding, not the bidding of the highest bidder? And now is the time to launch this American Evolution. Why? Because it is too late to do it sooner!
Uncle Swami wants YOU! Because replacing the current regime will require unprecedented commitment, persistence and strength on the part of the body politic. The 97-pound weakling or bloated couch potato body politic will have to swear off junk food media, and begin pumping ironies. We the people will need to revisit that ancient form of communication, "tell-a-person" so that truth emerges from all of its hiding places and permeates the entire political landscape.
Ten months from now, those of us -- Democrat, Republican, Green and Independent -- who believe in truth, justice and the real American way will be dancing in the streets. Or, we'll be preparing to huddle out of sight behind barbed wire in what NewSpeak Bush calls "Free Speech Zones." (Honest. You could look it up. That's where they put anti-Bush protesters so that they still can protest, but where absolutely no one can see them. See the San Francisco Chronicle "Insight" section, January 4, 2004, for an article which also appeared in the American Conservative on December 15, 2003, http://www.amconmag.com , go to archives).
And we will need plenty of conscious comedy and healing humor because -- as a fan in Texas once put it, "Humor is a great way to tell people what they don't want to hear in a way they want to hear it." At a time when there is so much "endarkenment," whole-hearted loving laughter helps us overcome fear and depression, and act and communicate with aliveness and empowerment.
The Swami's mission and message for the year -- to be outlined in the upcoming 2004 State of the Universe Address -- is "Wake up laughing!" This is a time for awakening: It's a time to awaken to the essential teaching of love hiding behind all of those religious dogmas, to awaken to the chain, chain chain of human foolishness that has kept us doing the same things over and over yet hoping for different results. It's a time to awaken to the awesome possibilities available to us when we apply love, wisdom and imagination. And what more enjoyable way to awaken then through laughter?
Wholehearted laughter provides the joy, encouragement and perspective we need to communicate the truth effectively and empower others to release the human pattern of "getting even," and choose to "get odd" instead. When we use our ingenuity and imagination to find that odd solution that will take humanity down a new road, we can create a "world win" campaign where the whole world wins. Look at what Bush and his Banana Republicans are offering: Perpetual warfare, environmental destruction, loss of civil liberties, growing gap between rich and poor.
Wow. Where can I sign up? Through the power of conscious comedy and healing laughter, we can help broadcast an "alter native vision" -- where we natives are altered for the better.
Steve Bhaerman,
January 12, 2004
http://www.wakeuplaughing.com/
© Copyright 2004 by Steve Bhaerman. All rights reserved.