Into the Heart of Life (27 page)
Read Into the Heart of Life Online
Authors: Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
Tags: #General, #Religion, #Buddhism, #Rituals & Practice, #Tibetan
Q: I am sure that as a female monastic you are often asked questions about gender. Do you feel the gender of one’s teacher is important?
JTP: Obviously whether one’s teacher is male or female plays a role. But the important thing is the sense of trust and commitment to the teacher, whatever gender they happen to be. And I feel also that many of the highest lamas in the Tibetan tradition manage somehow to transcend gender: they are both mother and father. So I don’t think we should make a big issue about it. I think that it’s more a matter of one’s karmic connection with the teacher rather than whether they happen to be male or female.
Q: What do you feel are the most important qualities to look for before taking a teacher? And additionally, how much of the responsibility is on the teacher to check up on the students before taking them on?
JTP: From the student’s point of view, of course the most important issue is that of trust. If you are going to take someone as a guide, first of all you have to believe that they know where they’re going because they’ve been there. So that’s the first thing—that they embody the personal qualities that we ourselves are striving to acquire. Secondly, one should truly trust that the teacher knows the student better than the student knows herself or himself and therefore really understands what is best for the student. And thirdly, there has to be some kind of inner karmic connection, some sense of recognition that this is the teacher. Because you can meet very, very great teachers, and you think, “Yes, they are wonderful,” but you don’t feel any particular connection with them. You could meet someone else who is not such a great teacher but nonetheless feel this heart connection. So it’s a very personal, individual thing. It’s not that there is just one world teacher for everybody.
Q: So it’s also good that it takes time, this process of choosing your teacher?
JTP: Well, I would like to say so, but I chose my lama before I even met him, so I can’t really act as a good example of that. But normally speaking, one is encouraged to test the lama first, to try to really look, if possible, as the Dalai Lama suggests, to find out what they are like when they are not sitting upon their throne—how they treat ordinary people, how they treat their attendants, how they treat people who are of no particular importance to them. Do they really embody the qualities which they talk about? As much as possible we should try to examine this. And I do think the teacher should also examine the student, because many people come to the Dharma who might be better off first getting some psychological therapy. Their reasons for seeking a teacher are sometimes not really the highest, they are very unstable, and therefore their needs may not really be met in the traditional student/teacher relationship. It might even aggravate the problem for them. On the whole, teachers are not very discriminating. They are more inclined toward numbers than quality.
Q: If one has taken a teacher and then sees them behaving badly or in seemingly inappropriate ways, what advice do you give students who are interpreting this? Is it even acceptable to leave a teacher once you have made a commitment to him?
JTP: Personally, I think that we should never completely surrender our own integrity. I think that it’s a big mistake to think that once you have taken on the teacher that’s it, and whatever he does you have to see it with pure perception. Of course, you know, one can point to Naropa and Tilopa and Marpa and Milarepa, but nonetheless I think that’s quite dangerous.
The point is that the students are the children and the teacher is the parent. A good parent helps the child to mature properly, to not endlessly be a child. And if a parent is abusive, then just because they are the parent doesn’t mean that the child should be left in their care. If a teacher really acts inappropriately or requests inappropriate behavior on the part of the student, then the student has the right, also as a human being, to say, “No, I’m very sorry, I don’t accept that,” or, “Well, okay, explain why you’re doing this.” And if the teacher will not explain, or their explanation doesn’t ring true, then I think it’s perfectly appropriate to say with all due respect, “Well, I’m sorry, I am going to find someone else.” Because quite frankly, many teachers, even though they might be very charismatic and even have some genuine experience and realization, might also have a big shadow which they’re not facing and which their culture doesn’t encourage them to face. And in dealing with that shadow, we have to use our common sense. If the relationship creates a lot of inner distress and trauma, then this is spiritually not in the least bit helpful. So without creating a lot of publicity or difficulty, one can just simply say, “Thank you very much for all your teachings,” and leave.
I don’t think the Tibetans themselves have really resolved this point. We see the teacher as the Buddha, first of all so that we don’t get attached to the personality and the appearance of the teacher. We’re not going for refuge to their personality; we’re going for refuge to their buddha nature, which they have realized and we have not, and to their ability to transmit that realization. So therefore one sees them in an idealized form. But at the same time, we have to realize that we are doing that for the sake of devotion and they are also human beings. If occasionally they act inappropriately—for example, they lose their temper over something about which there is no reason to lose your temper and they really are angry—then one can say, “Well, they are also human beings and it doesn’t matter; they have given so much through teaching and they have so many good qualities,” and leave that aside. But if they consistently are acting in questionable ways—like being very greedy, or wanting sexual relationships with their students, or accumulating a lot of money and then giving it to their family or building themselves great palaces and starving their monks, et cetera—then I think it is perfectly valid to question their conduct. Even in the ordinary world people don’t act like this.
Q: The teacher/student relationship is fundamental in Tibetan Buddhism. In reality, in the West, only a few can be so lucky to have a traditional guru/student relationship. So, often it happens to a practitioner that after some years there is less enthusiasm and interest. What can you advise to those in such a situation?
JTP: The important thing is to realize that even in a traditional guru/student relationship, it’s not really so necessary to always be around the guru. Once one has made a connection, even if one doesn’t see the guru very often and the guru is very far away, still one can keep the inner heart connection. For example, in the Tibetan tradition, there are very beautiful prayers for calling on the guru from afar. And especially if these are set to a melody and one can sing them from the heart, they create that connection with the guru, because it’s a mind-to-mind connection. Sometimes, even if the lama is sitting in front of you, you can feel there’s a thousand miles between you; likewise, you can be a thousand miles away and feel that the guru is right there, sitting in your heart. It’s not distance. That is not the true guru. So therefore, to develop a devotion to the guru, you don’t need proximity. At the same time, one has to realize that the ultimate guru is one’s own buddha nature: it’s the nature of the mind, and one has to cultivate being able to be centered within one’s own innate awareness and not depend so much on an external relationship. Because when one is in the nature of the mind, then one is indeed one with the guru. This is why when we do guru yoga we absorb the guru into ourselves—to realize that his or her mind and our own mind have become one. This is very important to realize. The ultimate guru is our own innate wisdom, and if we can access and cultivate that, then the enthusiasm for the Dharma just bubbles up endlessly. It doesn’t depend on external shots of inspiration from an actual person.
Q: Perhaps our misunderstanding is that having a guru means that we ought to have one single teacher and very strong devotion to that special person?
JTP: But the lamas themselves often have many gurus. Very few lamas actually just have one. Even Atisha had lots and lots of teachers. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has at least twenty-five main teachers whom he considers his root gurus. If you ask most lamas they say, “Oh yes, there is this one and that one and that one and that one.” They’re not necessarily just centered on one. Also, if one is open and sees everybody as an expression of the root guru, then teachings come from many sources.
9
Practicing the Good Heart
M
His Holiness the Dalai Lama came to the remote Lahaul Valley in India where I was living. He was there for about one week, giving Dharma talks and empowerments. After one of his talks, which had lasted for several hours, I turned to one of the Lahauli women and asked, “Do you know what he was talking about?”
She said, “I didn’t catch much. But I understood that if we have a good heart, that’s excellent.” And that is basically it, isn’t it? But let’s explore just what we mean by a good heart.
In the West, we have so many material things. But for many of us there is still a profound sense of lack, an emptiness inside, which we are unable to fill. Though we may strive to fill that void with televisions, cars, or houses, the problem is not one of how much or how little we have. Rather it is a matter of whether we believe material possessions will really bring us deep-seated satisfaction. This is actually an advantage for the West: if we can get over our sense of wonder at material possessions, we can begin to see that there is something beyond them. We have this untold wealth within us, and this is what the spiritual path is all about.
There is a need, an urgency now, that we become spiritually mature. Opening to our human potential, believing in it—we have to stand together and support each other. It is not the time to be paranoid and parochial, fearful and insular; it is not the time to close our borders within and without. Fearfulness expresses immaturity. A genuinely adult person is fearless. As was said earlier,
bodhisattva
means a being who strives for enlightenment out of compassion for the world; in Tibetan, literally a spiritual hero. And we do have to be very courageous to stand up to what is happening around us. We have to support and respect each other’s integrity as human beings, and we have to use our lives in a way which is genuinely meaningful. Rather than wander around as spiritual beggars, as we normally do, we have to learn how to come back into the spiritual wealth that is within us.
I remember when I lived in Nepal, every morning on my way to visit a lama I would pass an old beggar woman on the worn steps of Swayambhunath Stupa. She was destitute and skinny. I never saw anybody take care of her, or even come near her, and yet inwardly she seemed very joyful. Smiling, she always greeted me. One morning she looked especially radiant, and I thought, “She is going to die.” And in fact, the next day she was gone. We might well ask, what did she have to be so happy about? Why did she have this inner joy bubbling up?
During the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, many lamas were sent to prisons and hard labor camps for ten or twenty years or more. They were continually abused, tortured, and interrogated. And by rights, if they had survived, they would have come out completely traumatized, broken, and bitter. No doubt there were Tibetans who went through this experience and came out traumatized. But one can meet with lamas who went through these terrible experiences, and far from being crushed, they are joyful and welling over with an inner happiness. I met a great master of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage, the late H.E. Adeu Rinpoche, and said, “Your twenty years in prison must have been very difficult.”
“Oh, no, no. It was just like a retreat!” he said laughing. “Do you know, they even fed us?”
Another lama said to me, “I am so grateful for that opportunity. I really learned compassion. Before, compassion was a word debated in philosophical schools. But when you’re faced with someone who only wants to harm you, then there is this question of whether you fall into resentment and fear, or surmount that and have tremendous love and compassion for your tormentor.”
Whatever our external circumstances, in the end happiness or unhappiness depends on the mind. Consider that the one companion whom we stay with, continually, day and night, is our mind. Would you really want to travel with someone who endlessly complains and tells you how useless you are, how hopeless you are; someone who reminds you of all the awful things that you have done? And yet for many of us, this is how we live—with this difficult-to-please, always-pulling-us-around, tireless critic that is our mind. It entirely overlooks our good points, and is genuinely a very dreary companion. No wonder depression is so prevalent in the West!
We have to befriend and encourage ourselves. We have to remind ourselves of our goodness as well as consider what may need improvement. We have to remember, especially, our essential nature. It is covered over, but wisdom and compassion are ever present. In the West, we so often undercut ourselves because we don’t believe in ourselves. The first time I met His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa, in Calcutta in 1965, he said to me within the first ten minutes, “Your problem is that you have no confidence. You don’t believe in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself, who will believe in you?” And that is true.
Since beginningless time we have been utterly pure and perfect. According to the Buddhist view, our original mind is like the sky. It has no center and no limit. The mind is infinitely vast. It is not composed of “me” and “mine.” It is what interconnects us with all beings—it is our true nature. Unfortunately, it has become obscured by clouds, and we identify with these clouds rather than with the deep blue eternal sky. And because we identify with the clouds, we have very limited ideas regarding who we really are. If we truly understood that from the very beginning we have been perfect, but that somehow confusion arose and covered our true nature, then there would be no question of feeling oneself unworthy. The potential for enlightenment is always here, for each one of us, if we could but recognize it.
Once we acknowledge this, then our words about having a good heart can truly make sense. Because then we are expressing our essential nature through kindness, compassion, and understanding. It is not a matter of trying to develop something that we do not already have. Seeing this through the lens of another metaphor, we may feel that opening to our essential nature is as coming back to a pure spring. Inside us, we have a spring of everlasting wisdom and love. It is ever-present and yet it has become blocked, and we feel dry within ourselves, as dry as the earth can be. Clinging to all these terribly false identifications, we do not recognize the pure fathomless spring underneath.
The point is that when our mind is filled with generosity and thoughts of kindness, compassion, and contentment, the mind feels well. When our mind is full of anger, irritation, self-pity, greed, and grasping, the mind feels sick. And if we really inquire into the matter, we can see that we have the choice: we can decide to a large extent what sort of thoughts and feelings will occupy our mind. When negative thoughts come up, we can recognize them, accept them, and let them go. We can choose not to follow them, which would only add more fuel to the fire. And when good thoughts come to mind—thoughts of kindness, caring, generosity, and contentment, and a sense of not holding on so tightly to things any more, we can accept and encourage that, more and more. We can do this. We are the guardian of the precious treasure that is our own mind.
When the Buddha spoke of the practice of loving-kindness, he said there were two ways in which to engage it. We could send out thoughts of love in all directions—north, south, east, west, up and down and everywhere. Directionless, we radiate loving-kindness to all beings in the world. Or, the Buddha said, we could begin our practice with the people we like—our family, partner, children, friends—over time extending our range to people we feel indifferent toward and then to people we dislike. Eventually our practice of loving-kindness reaches out still further to embrace all beings everywhere. But before doing any of this, the Buddha said that we are to begin our practice by radiating loving-kindness to ourselves. We start by thinking, “May I be well and happy. May I be peaceful and at my ease.”
If we do not first feel that sense of kindness toward ourselves, how are we ever going to be kind to others? We are opening to love and compassion for all sentient beings—humans, animals, insects, fish, birds—beings both seen and unseen, beings in the higher realms and in the lower realms, beings throughout the universe. All sentient beings are the object of our love and our compassion. So how is it then that we omit the being right here, the one who is opening to this endless love? Practicing like this would be like radiating light while standing in the dark. And that is not right. We must first extend our loving-kindness toward the being who is also in need: oneself. This is very much part of what it means to develop a good heart.
When I was with my own lama, Khamtrul Rinpoche, I would think he was like a mountain. I mean, he was a big man. But he was like a mountain because he was so unshakable, and I would think, “Even if the sky fell down, Rinpoche could deal with it.” He gave the impression of being completely capable in all situations; nothing could ruffle him. There was a tremendous sense of quiet power. Another student once said to me, “Why is it that when Rinpoche just drinks a cup of coffee it has so much significance, but when we drink it doesn’t mean anything?” And it was true!
Once, in a dream, I was in a theatre in the wings. On the stage was a very high throne, and on it was sitting His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa. All the spotlights were shining on him. The audience was there. And before their eyes he was transforming himself into all the various peaceful and wrathful deities. I remember thinking, “Well, that’s pretty wonderful, but it’s a bit ostentatious.” And then I turned, and saw that my lama Khamtrul Rinpoche was also standing in the wings, watching His Holiness. And then as I looked at Khamtrul Rinpoche I saw that inside him were all the deities, while on the outside, he just looked like a lama. He gave me that look which said, “Do understand!” I realized then that it was His Holiness the Karmapa’s activity to show all these wonders. But I also realized that it was Khamtrul Rinpoche’s activity to keep it all hidden. And both were really the same. Each was manifesting his Buddha activity in a different way. So, some lamas are more forthright. Others are very hidden. But it is the quality of their inner realization that counts.
A genuinely good heart is based on understanding the situation as it really is. It is not a matter of sentimentality. Nor is a good heart just a matter of going around in a kind of euphoria of fake love, denying suffering, and saying that all is bliss and joy. It is not like that. A genuinely good heart is a heart that is open and alight with understanding. It listens to the sorrows of the world. Our society is wrong to think that happiness depends on fulfilling one’s own wants and desires. That is why our society is so miserable. We are a society of individuals, all obsessed with trying to obtain our own happiness. We are cut off from our sense of interconnection with others; we are cut off from reality. Because in reality, we are all interconnected.
Let us start from where we are. And let us start with who we are. It’s no good wanting to be somebody else; it’s no good fantasizing about what it would be like if we were this or that. We have to start from here and now, in the situation that we are in. We have to deal with our family and friends and all whom we meet. That is the challenge. Sometimes we avoid our present circumstances and think that surely we will meet with the perfect situation somewhere. But that will never happen. There will never be an ideal time and place because we take the same mind with us everywhere. The problem isn’t out there; the problem is usually within us. And so we need to cultivate our inner transformation. Once we have developed our inner change, we can deal with whatever happens.
The Buddha spoke of the truth of suffering and the cause of suffering. The cause of suffering is grasping. We hold on to things so tightly because we do not know how to hold them lightly. But everything is impermanent. Everything is flowing. Nothing is static or solid. We cannot hold to anything. Holding on causes us so much fear and pain. It is not an expression of love. Love opens the heart. A loving heart expresses, very simply, “May you be well and happy.” It does not say, “May you make me well and happy.” The term “heaven” implies that in the end, all our problems will be forever resolved. But in the Mahayana ideal, our motivation is to perfect ourselves solely that we may become the servant of others throughout eternity. In this light, we may imagine: If there were no great masters in the world, what would beings do? There would be no hope.
I once had a dream in which I was escaping from a very frightening totalitarian state. Just as I was about to cross the border to a safe and beautiful country, I thought, “How is it that I am able to escape? From my side, I have really done nothing—so what is it that is allowing me to escape like this?” As I looked toward the customs point at the barrier, I saw a man standing there, watching me, and I thought, “It’s him! What is he doing here? He doesn’t even belong to this horrible country. He belongs to that beautiful, free country. He doesn’t have to live here. But if he didn’t, people like me could never get out! It’s because of him that I am free.” I woke up crying and recollected that the man in the dream was my lama, Khamtrul Rinpoche. He was wearing lay clothes, but it was certainly him. I was so overwhelmed by the dream, by the understanding of his incredible kindness and compassion and of what he had to suffer, when he didn’t need to at all. He simply suffered out of compassion for beings like me who could not manage without him. That is what a high bodhisattva is. They do not need to be in this world—they could just groove it out in some wonderful Buddha Pure Land, but yet they come back here. Bodhisattvas come back to help us out of pure unconditional compassion. And this is what we open to within ourselves.