Lama Rod Owens has long been fascinated by the relationship between social liberation and ultimate freedom. As an author, activist, and authorized lama in the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, he has worked at the intersection of social change, identity, and spiritual practice, exploring how activist work and spiritual practice can support each other. Recently, he’s been grappling with the question of what freedom looks like in our current political context and how spiritual practice can support us through our current crises.

In his new book, The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors, Owens draws from the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism and Black liberation movements to put forth the notion of the New Saint. “The New Saint is a rethinking of what it means to be a bodhisattva right now, with a particular focus on relative justice and its relationship to ultimate liberation,” he told Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen. “It’s about the contemporary experience of people in a world that seems to be on the edge of catastrophe.”

Shaheen sat down with Owens on a recent episode of Tricycle Talks to discuss why he believes that the apocalypse is an opportunity for awakening, the power of connecting with our ancestors and unseen beings, why the New Saint is not necessarily a good person, and how fierceness can be a form of awakened care. Read an excerpt from their conversation, then listen to the full episode.

You refer to the New Saint’s magic, which depends on two practices: the expression of awakened care and the development of our capacity to disrupt habitual reactivity. Can you walk us through what you mean by awakened care? Awakened care is my experience of bodhicitta. We traditionally define bodhicitta as the awakened heart-mind, but I would say that it’s the magic of the bodhisattva. It’s this view of deep connectedness and deep empathy, where we’re doing the work of liberation not just for ourselves but for all beings. When I am attempting to get free, that labor is also helping others to get free.

Not only do I have to choose freedom, I have to understand that I deserve to be free.

When I began to think about this in terms of the New Saint, I began asking myself, What is my actual felt experience of bodhicitta? The first thing I felt was love, this deep acceptance, holding space for everything and wishing for everyone and everything to be free. I also experienced compassion, tuning into the suffering of both ourselves and the world and actually committing to freeing ourselves and others from suffering. The other piece of this is joy. I feel deep joy for having the capacity to choose to benefit beings through my practice. I’m overwhelmed by that, and there’s deep gratitude in that joy as well. And of course, everything is based in emptiness, so we have the capacity for all of this to happen because of the profound potential of emptiness and space.

When all of this is streamed together, it begins to awaken care, a deep, profound care, the kind of care that says, “I’m going to do everything that I can to get free because I care that much for myself and for others.” An important point here too is that I have to care for myself enough to want to get free to begin with. And a lot of us aren’t there either. Some of us don’t really believe that we deserve to be free from suffering. Not only do I have to choose freedom, I have to understand that I deserve to be free.

You write that awakened care can cause us to lose a sense of agency so that we’re swept up in the agenda of the liberation of all beings and things. So how is it that we surrender to the agenda of liberation? [The author and filmmaker] Toni Cade Bambara has this notion of wanting to make revolution irresistible so that it’s the sweetest, most important thing that we could be doing, and it just becomes what we do and who we are. In awakened care, I’m trying to dissolve the sense of self, and that’s going to bring me into a more direct relationship with the essence or with emptiness itself. In a way, we can describe it as the cultivation of virtue.

When we practice goodness, it becomes a habit, where we’re choosing how to reduce harm moment to moment. We’re just attuned to choosing what will reduce harm. For me, that’s another way that we get swept up: we’re reprogramming ourselves to choose what is conducive to liberation. I want to get lost in that so that everything I do becomes an expression of goodness and therefore an expression of virtue.

One stream of awakened care is love, which you describe as a form of radical acceptance. Can you say more about how you’ve come to understand love? It’s hard to change when you haven’t really told the truth about what’s actually happening, and so the first expression of love is actually allowing ourselves to hold space for everything that’s arising. This is how it is. I don’t have to like it; I just have to name it and notice it.

I think what keeps us from doing that profound radical work of love is heartbreak. When I start telling the truth about how things really are, then my heart is going to break because I have been so concerned with telling myself narratives about how I want things to be in order to feel good about what’s happening. When I let go of that and say, “This is it. This is what’s happening,” my heart breaks, which is the experience of having to touch into this deep disappointment.

Once I start doing that, then there’s an honesty that awakens, and that profound holding becomes love. This is what’s happening, and therefore, I can make a choice to change what needs to change now because I’m not lost in these delusions and narratives about how I think things are; I know how things are. It creates a deeper intimacy with all phenomena and all beings, because you’re with the truth now, and you know that the truth is that everything and everyone deserves to be free.

Another aspect of the work of the New Saint is reclaiming beauty while also disrupting capitalism and overconsumption. So how can beauty help us access the sublime and the transcendent? When I surrender to beauty, I’m letting go of the ways in which I’m protecting and guarding myself. I’m allowing myself to expand, and I’m letting go of the sense of who I think I am, and then beginning to experience and touch into the actual expression of spaciousness. And when I do that, things get more fluid and more inviting. The world becomes less antagonistic, less rigid, less sharp. It becomes more translucent for me when I’m surrendering and opening. And that is the experience of the sublime. That translucent fluidity really is about connecting to this ultimate experience of emptiness itself. But it’s not about materialism. And so instead of accumulating luxury goods that I can’t afford, I connect to the energetic expression of beauty, which feeds a deeper sense of self-worth. That self-worth is about me wanting not to suffer and wanting to actually experience ultimate liberation.

Let’s go a step further and talk about desire. You say that yearning is the first step in touching the divine. How have you learned to work with and channel yearning? You have to want to get free. Desire or yearning is the last thing we give up before ultimate enlightenment. That yearning for enlightenment is going to take us to the threshold, and to go beyond that threshold, we have to let go of wanting to get free, which I think will be a really hard choice to make. But I am training myself to yearn for things that lead to freedom, liberation, fluidity, and movement, not to continue yearning for the things that create rigidity and separateness. And the more I yearn and the more I practice, the more I begin to experience what freedom is, so I know that this is what I should be focusing on: not the rigidity but the experience of getting open and clear and translucent and fluid. That’s it. And so I just start yearning for it. In the same way that we yearn for our bad habits, we can start yearning for experiences of liberation.

The post The Magic of the New Saint appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

One of my early memories related to books is that of my mother reading me a book about wizardry—young wizards from Long Island, to be precise—before sleep. At one point, she stops and struggles to pronounce an extremely long, multisyllabic name of a cosmic force that temporarily arrives in our dimension to help the main characters. “I don’t know how to read this,” she admits. “Is that phrase in the book?” I ask doubtfully.

The book charms me so much that I quickly start reading it myself—I’m too impatient to wait for it to be read aloud by someone else in sessions (same reason I’m still not particularly good with audiobooks). Eventually, I reread the book—So You Want to Be a Wizard, by Diane Duane—more than a hundred times before losing my first copy (extremely well-worn by then) during a big family move from the Urals to Moscow.

Although it was years before I could find another copy of the same novel (now always traveling with me as a digital book), I continued reading other parts of the same young adult series. More importantly, the book’s key ideas deeply impacted me, brewing and normalizing the outline of my life and work—things that stemmed from my inner predispositions. 

So You Want to Be a Wizard begins with a 13-year-old girl named Nita finding a wizardry manual while trying to escape a beating from a school bully. The manual she picks up is not merely a collection of spells—rather, it’s a self-updating guide that gives one access to the cosmic database of wizardry. The price to pay for that access (and the energy of wizardry itself) is taking an oath to use magic only to protect life and ease the pain of beings: essentially, to slow down entropy and to protect all who live.

Nita does not hesitate to take the oath, and neither did I in those days—reading it out loud numerous times in the hopes of obtaining similar access to special powers beyond the ordinary. While my ability to control natural elements, travel across universes, or manipulate the laws of physics never arrived, the underlying ethic of protecting life stayed deep within me as an aspirational wish until, some years later, at the age of 18, I took the bodhisattva precepts from a visiting Tibetan lama. The wizard’s oath turned into an oath of bodhicitta, now reviewed and contemplated daily: the vow to fully uncover the amazing potential within, to fully wake up for the benefit of all beings, and, on the road toward that, to practice and perfect the six amazing qualities of a bodhisattva: generosity, ethical discipline, and so on, culminating with the wisdom that sees emptiness and interdependence in union. The bodhisattva precepts guide one in applying those qualities to daily life to protect and nurture beings, while the “cosmic bodhisattvas” (like Kuan Yin or Kshitigarbha) provide a steady inflow of inspiration, and, for some people, miracles on the path. 

Unsurprisingly, I remember Duane’s formulation of the wizard’s oath almost as well as the words used in the actual bodhisattva precepts. Just like the precepts expressed in slightly different words across the different traditions, the wizardly oath to protect the world can also be shared in different ways. In one of the later books in the series, Duane offers an alternative recension of the same oath, formulated in this alternate way for a young autistic prodigy:

Life
more than just being alive
(and worth the pain)

but hurts:
fix it
grows:
keep it growing 

wants to stop:
remind
check / don’t hurt
be sure

One’s watching: 
get it right!
later it all works out,
honest

meantime,
make it work
now
(because now
is all you ever get:
now is)

Nita’s journey as a wizard quickly puts her at odds with the one force representing the origin of all problems in the universe–the Lone Power–which represents and embodies the wish to isolate, to exclude oneself from the interdependence and interpenetration of things. Encounters with this force, which sometimes manifests in its menacing avatars and sometimes simply acts through our in-dwelling afflictions, are never fully unsympathetic: even the original troublemaker is shown to be worthy of eventually being reintegrated into the boundless web of life. 

Since this process of protecting and rebuilding is all about supporting and strengthening the interconnectedness of life, Nita is inevitably supported by numerous companions, including a fellow teenage wizard Kit (who is himself bullied for being an immigrant), family members, and numerous other wizards from across the universe—human, animal, alien, straight, cisgender, transgender, and multigender from numerous species and numerous corners of the world. That was a powerful lesson for me in finding allies—who might be nothing like you and yet full of love—anywhere and everywhere.

Like everyone striving to master an art, Nita and Kit rely on the support of senior wizards, who, although not showing up as teachers per se (since the wizardly manual provides all the relevant information), still act as guides and advisors. The art of wizardry is embodied in these experienced practitioners; what seems novel and somewhat confusing to a beginner permeates the life of an adept with effortless ease. Showing by personal example is, inescapably, a huge part of Buddhist practice. My trajectory in the dharma would certainly not be as long or joyful if, as an interpreter, I didn’t get a chance to accompany senior practitioners and observe their very way of being, so richly imbued with dharmic qualities and insights. 

Interestingly enough—for my young queer mind—the primary advisors of the young wizards turn out to be two men in their 30s, cohabitating in a Long Island house with a few dogs and other wizardly pets (including a talking parrot). Tom and Carl, as they are called, are described as handsome and broad-shouldered, and no particular explanation is given for their shared living situation—except that they work and live together and enjoy the respect of their neighbors and fellow wizards alike. 

What’s up with that, the readers later asked? Was this a revolutionary literary step for a children’s book originally published in 1986? In retrospect, I believe so. When asked about the romantic implications of Tom and Carl’s situation, Duane politely declined to elaborate, explaining that the two are based on two specific friends and citing the need to respect their privacy (and their actual familial arrangement, which might be completely different). Over time, she instead introduced a wide range of openly queer characters that joined the series’ cast or were always present in her novels aimed at adult audiences. However, for me personally, a basic level of representation was already right there from the very first book: two men can cohabitate, do wizardry together, help others, and adopt pets. As someone who’s relatively private about his personal life, I find that level of detail quite sufficient—and extremely relatable. 

Quite importantly, in Duane’s universe, Tom and Carl’s situation is simply not an issue of anyone’s concern. She creates an alternate reality, similar to the one in the sitcom Schitt’s Creek in which homophobia is not given a place. This equally pertains to the issue of being trans: gender-affirming magical transformations are described as absolutely permissible in the eyes of the Powers that preside over magic, because why not? An author of YA books who honors trans people in her work? I bow to that.

I keep revisiting Duane’s novels to this day. My other favorite in the series, A Wizard Abroad, unpacks Irish mythology and introduces the concept of a land haunted by old energetic traumas (something not unheard of in the chöd lineage of Buddhist practice), all against the backdrop of Nita developing her first crush. This book and a few others remain part of my lunch table collection, and I still find their moral lessons personally pertinent.

I’m forever grateful for how much one book can do in offering both representation and ethical guidance.

What’s more, I’m forever grateful for how much one book can do in offering both representation and ethical guidance. The wizard’s oath and its ethos did not make me a Buddhist, and Tom and Carl certainly did not make me queer. They just helped me normalize what I already knew about myself and ethics, offering a ray of hope and a glimpse into something bigger. One thoughtfully written book about kindness and interdependence was enough for that (though we need hundreds and thousands more). In much the same way, when fellow queer people ask me whether there’s anything in Buddhism to support the validity of our existence, I usually just need to quote one powerful ally—such as Garchen Rinpoche, with his simple and powerful words on queerness—to give them hope. Yes, the more representation and support, the better. But even one person performing the truest wizardry of kindness, the wizardry of living and letting live, is sometimes enough to keep us going.

The post Sometimes, You Need Only One Book appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

It seems to me that all those who enter a spiritual path have very similar goals, though these goals may not always be articulated. These might be described, in the broadest strokes, as love, as peace, as freedom from suffering—that is, as a happiness that is fulfilling in the most complete sense. This is, I think, a universal aspiration.

The question, then, that follows from this is: What are those forces that keep us from experiencing this kind of happiness? In Buddhism, these forces are called the defilements of mind, the afflictive emotions such as fear, greed, jealousy, and hatred, which are all rooted in ignorance and delusion. Although various paths speak of the afflictive emotions in their own distinct ways, all share the understanding that we need some means to purify the heart and free the mind. While it may be addressed differently in different traditions, on the spiritual path there is really only one issue: extricating ourselves from those forces in the mind by which we are bound. This is not esoteric; it’s not mysterious. It’s simply the challenge of our everyday experience.

In Buddhism, our particular way of addressing these matters is to say that the root of the problem is the delusion of selfhood. Because we are living in this delusion, this prison of self, we identify with the afflictive emotions, thereby feeding and encouraging them. And whether we practice as householders engaged with family and work or as monks in the forest, the question is the same: Does what we do strengthen the sense of self through those habits of mind—fixation, contraction, identification—that prevent our aspiration for the highest happiness from being fulfilled, or does it work to purify the heart and free the mind from those qualities? This is the only question that really matters.

Debates about the relative merits of different approaches to the spiritual life are often framed in a way that is misleading. To speak, for example, of one approach as being life-affirming and another as life-denying misses the point, because the path is not about affirming life or denying it—it’s about emerging from delusion. If one’s practice as a householder comes from a place of self, a place of attachment, desire, and identification, then that is not a path of liberation. Similarly, if one’s monastic practice is done from a place of fear or aversion, then that also is not the way. The reference point for examining our lives and the choices we make is the quality of heart and mind out of which they come. Skillful choices about the best circumstances and styles of practice will naturally vary according to the needs and the situation at particular times in people’s lives.

For example, one traditional Buddhist practice that Westerners sometimes find troubling is the contemplation of the non-beautiful aspects of the body. The problem is partly one of translation. The Pali word asuba is generally translated as “loathsome,” “repulsive,” or “disgusting.” But the actual meaning of the word is simply “not beautiful,” a term with far fewer negative associations. But even when the language is cleaned up, for many the problem remains. Meditating on decaying corpses or on the “non-beautiful” aspects of our living bodies seems weird or out of balance. It seems to go against the belief that we should be learning to respect and honor the beauty of the body. It is crucial to understand that such objections miss the point of these practices, which is to release the mind from identification with the body. This is one of our most deeply rooted attachments and the cause of tremendous suffering.

So asuba practice has nothing to do with denying life or hating the body. It is simply one means to free ourselves from the delusion that takes the body to be the self. For some, these techniques will work well; perhaps for others contemplating the impermanent, insubstantial nature of beauty will be the path of freedom. How well any technique works depends on how it is taught and the particular conditioning of the individual who undertakes it. But we err when we extrapolate from a particular method a general characterization of an entire tradition. In all methods, we must understand that which is essential about the transformative process of liberation.

Of course, it is not only the body with which we identify. We are continually ensnared by the workings of the mind—its moods, emotions, concepts, opinions, judgments, and so forth. Caught up as we are in the mind’s busyness, it is only in rare moments that we touch that space of open, free awareness that is its true nature. One of the things I love about being on retreat is that it reveals so clearly that so much of the time the mind is in some state—sometimes obvious, sometimes extremely subtle—of attachment or aversion. Trungpa Rinpoche spoke of the meditative path as being one insult after another. This is important to understand because it points to the level of attentiveness we need to cultivate in our lives if we want to fulfill that aspiration for peace, for love, for freedom.

One of the dangers I see among Western practitioners is the enticement to say, “Well, everything I do is my practice,” as if no special effort is required. Theoretically this is a valid point, but is it really true in how we actually live? Staying awake does not come easily. It requires tremendous energy, commitment, and courage. Just look to the examples of the great figures in any spiritual tradition—to the intensity, exertion, and renunciation manifest in their practice. Meditation is very humbling in that it reflects back to us the depth of our attachments and the inspiration and commitment needed to get free of them. Sustained meditation practice makes it more difficult to fool ourselves.

Although renunciation may express itself in outward forms, its essence is the letting go of the mind’s habits of delusion. Even just a moment of such release is powerful, because it provides a reference point, an alternative to the false sense of self we ordinarily experience. The more we taste of this experience of emptiness, the more we can truly make our life our practice, rather than simply holding “life as practice” as a nice idea.

The profound stillness in which the mind’s intrinsic, radiant emptiness is realized is not something apart from spiritual activity in the world. It is its foundation. Each of us acts and abides within a unique set of karmic conditions, which localize us in the specifics of place, social and familial relationships, and all the other circumstances that make up our unfolding life. But these very circumstances are themselves empty. Emptiness and specificity are not in contradiction; they constitute a union. While we accept, open to, and even honor the specifics of our lives, without the recognition of their essential emptiness, we will easily fall into attachment. The fullness of the spiritual path is the understanding that love, that compassion, is the expression of emptiness. These are not two separate things; one is an attribute of the other.

In my own practice, this understanding has been greatly enriched by some of the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. For many years, the bodhisattva vow of Mahayana Buddhism—to practice in order to save all beings—made little sense to me. How in the world would I, or anyone, be able to enlighten all beings? It seemed like a beautiful idea, but an impossibility. What gave the vow meaning to me was the teaching of absolute and relative bodhicitta, or “awakened mind.” Relative bodhicitta is compassion; absolute bodhicitta is emptiness. The compassionate activity expressed by the vow is the manifestation of the realization of emptiness. The energy to save all beings arises in precisely that consciousness that knows that there is no one to save and no one to do the saving. It is here that the spiritual path finds its completeness.

 ⧫ 

From the Fall 1997 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 14, No. 1) Text © 1997-2020 by Joseph Goldstein and Inquiring Mind

Related Inquiring Mind articles:

• “The Incredible Exploding Self: An Interview with Joanna Macy”
  
• “Who’s Asking the Questions Here? A Non-Interview with Hari Lal Poonja”
• “The Flavors of Anatta: Reflections from a Theravada Perspective”

The post Love as the Expression of Emptiness appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

It might have been a different story had there been more than two of them. In the case of an actual infestation, I can’t say I wouldn’t have pulled out one of those flytraps that unspool into a sticky ribbon of death. But I decided I couldn’t get rid of these two even if I tried. They must have come in on a grocery bag from the outdoor market. Or on the back of my shirt. In the five years I have been living on the eleventh floor, I have never had any fruit flies. These two were relentless. I tried opening the apartment door to the hallway, but they flew into the kitchen. After several frustrating hours, I realized they were definitely here to stay. The only question was for how long. I googled the life span of a fruit fly. It was two to three weeks.

Week 1

Their favorite place to land seemed to be the top of my head, right on my bald spot. They also liked to hang out on both of my arms. I assumed that they were getting some kind of nourishment. From sweat?

When I sat meditating, I had to put my meditation shawl over my head, because the constant coming and going of the two flies began to compete with the thoughts I was already trying to tame. They also liked to explore my face. It was impossible not to instinctively swat at them. They were sentient beings. I didn’t want to kill them; I just wanted them to go away.

If I got out of my chair, they followed me. If I stood cooking dinner, they got excited and dive-bombed me. When I came home, I would spot them immediately because they would just be hanging out on the armrest of my recliner. As soon as I sat down, they’d go walking up and down my arms, and fly up to my head. Every once in a while they did zoomies and went hell-bent for leather in every room. I knew they were tiny little flies, but they were beginning to seem ominous.

During the week, my irritation morphed into all-out rage. One afternoon, right after repeatedly snapping a dish towel at them, I sat down and had a hard talk with myself, while all the while they kept spinning around my head. (By the way, they were never alone and always traveled as a pair.) I told myself to get a grip and then remembered something I had heard from a therapist on talk radio. He was an anger management coach, and I could recall him yelling at that very moment, “Don’t get furious, get curious!” These five words had the effect of a whole dharma talk.

So I wondered what they ate. Unsurprisingly, it was rotten fruit. I didn’t have any around the house, nor did I want to conjure any. They seemed to be getting nourishment from somewhere, and they were certainly sparky enough for me to feel they were getting what they needed in the apartment. I continued being curious. I discovered that fruit flies were coveted by geneticists for research because of their short lives, which could create hundreds of generations to track in a short time. A friend I told this to laughingly accused me of becoming a fruit fly apologist.

Week 2

I began to find ways to tolerate them. When I cooked, I covered all the ingredients before the flies landed on them. I did the same with a simple glass of water. Bedtime required a strategy: I would turn out all the lights in the apartment except for the bathroom, reasoning that the one light would appeal to them. I would then make a dash for the bedroom and slam the door behind me. This didn’t always work.

I didn’t want to kill them; I just wanted them to go away.

I had no idea, and still don’t know, if fruit flies sleep. What I do know is that I awoke one morning to find them both perched on my pillow, completely still. Were they just waiting for me to start the day? In my drowsiness I found myself in a Looney Toons cartoon, actually imagining that they were both having a conversation with me in teeny screechy voices that I couldn’t decipher. At that point, I believed we were becoming friends.

Week 3

I came across Pema Chödrön’s book Welcoming the Unwelcome. It couldn’t have come at a better time. The book spoke to me; it was the very dilemma I found myself in. What synchronicity! Reflecting on one chapter titled “Welcoming the Unwelcome with Laughter,” I realized that I had been chuckling to myself more often than not about the whole dilemma these days.

Of course, this would soon stop in the face of a new anxiety: fruit flies lay hundreds of eggs at once, a Google search told me. Was I unintentionally promoting a real infestation? Was I going to have to pull out those sticky strips after all? I wondered if they were a breeding couple. As it turns out, one needs a microscope to be able to identify their sex. I essentially wished upon a star that they were either both females, or both males.

Toward the end of this week, I began to see that both of them were getting darker and smaller. They had gone from their original brown to jet black. And they did seem to be less active. They were indolent. When I’d swoosh them away with my hand, they sometimes didn’t even move out of the way. And then one morning, one of them disappeared. Two days later, the other was gone. They were so small by then, I could never have found their bodies, but clearly they had lived out their life span, right on the dot of three weeks.

I’ve thought about how they gave me the opportunity to be virtuous, not because I didn’t (or couldn’t) kill them, but because I had found a way to live with them through those three weeks. I had gone from an entitled human to one who, in spite of himself, was forced to take on the challenge of “welcoming the unwelcome.” At least in some—admittedly clumsy—way.

I felt sad. I had followed them, in the near blink of an eye, through their entire lives. I was reminded that any sentient being’s life and death is something sacred and cherishable. I know, now, from Pema Chödrön, that there are innumerable paths and ways to experience bodhicitta. I’d gone from nearly blind rage to a tenderness toward “my” two flies. And in that very moment, in the tiniest of ways, I felt my heart grow larger.

♦  

This article was originally published online here. 

The post Fruit Fly Dharma appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Perfectionism is a disease among my patients. People’s inner dialogues these days are unrelenting. The irony of all this is that the more perfect someone might seem on the outside, oftentimes the more broken they are on the inside. It takes a ceaseless, judging superego to maintain the veneer of perfection to the outside world, and any sort of crack in the crevices of one’s soul proves that one is messing up. Some of my patients with critical inner dialogues never give themselves a break, regardless of their success. If they publish a novel, it’s not good enough because it wasn’t published by a major label press or didn’t win any awards. If they get into graduate school, it’s not good enough because it wasn’t the best school in the country. 

I often ask myself: Why are so many suffering from this perfectionism? There is no doubt that perfectionism is a defense, but a defense against what? Well, like a lot of defenses, perfectionism begins in childhood. While many parents set high expectations for their children, even “good enough” parents—to borrow a phrase from the psychologist D.W. Winnicott—are not immune to pushing their children and praising them for their achievements. Even an innocuous statement like “I want you to be happy” can send the wrong message to a child. You may say I’m picking nits here. How can saying you want your child to be happy be imperfect parenting? It’s simple: Saying you want your child to be happy implies that if a child doesn’t feel happy, then they are doing something wrong. Subtleties like this can lead to a more judging mind. In contrast, if you tell a child that it’s OK to feel whatever they feel, it allows them to freely express who they are.

Our society is another reason perfectionism reigns supreme. The truth is that in the modern economy we are in competition. Capitalism breeds it, encourages it. The free market, according to some, is a meritocracy, and unworthy corporations or people get weeded out. To put it another way, only the strong survive. Whether we realize it or not, this attitude is embedded deep in the American psyche. As a result, we naturally feel competitive with our peers. I can’t tell you how many of my patients cannot celebrate the successes of their friends and peers, as it inevitably makes them feel envious. 

Social media encourages this competition as well. The rise of influencers is an extreme example of this: people paid to show a fantasy lifestyle that in no way resembles reality but unconsciously gives us an example of what life should look like (even if we reject what we’re seeing). It’s sort of like junk food. Sure, in small doses it’s fine, but if you eat it every day you’ll start to feel sluggish. Operating on a more subtle level are the prosaic everyday social media posts: videos and photos of your friends having fun. This can be a great thing, to see what people in your life are up to, but again, like junk food, if you consume it constantly, it will start to have negative effects on your psyche of which you probably aren’t even aware.  Many of my patients have unprocessed expectations of what their lives should be based on the social media they consume. (I try to encourage patients to consciously consume social media and follow therapy-like accounts that encourage self-reflection.) 

There is little correlation between a person who is well-adjusted and a so-called perfect life. That poses the question: What does a well-adjusted person look like in this society? For me, it is someone who can accept their life and feelings just as they are. This is where my Buddhist practice becomes helpful. One of my favorite Mahayana Buddhist phrases is bodhicitta, which can roughly be translated as “awakening mind.” It describes the soft, tender core of beings, the part of us that is open and vulnerable, the part of us that we try to cover up day-to-day to survive. Bodhicitta encourages us to make friends with our vulnerabilities and our deepest pain. It means that every moment is a chance to awaken our hearts just a little more, and to grow with self-love and compassion for ourselves. Inevitably, if we can give ourselves self-love, then that love eventually extends out to all the people in our life. 

It is important to define what “self-love” is, however. It is not the praise of our parents or society for “doing well” or “achieving.” It is not the easy victories of vanity or being beloved by the outside world. And it is not those Instagram posts that encourage self-love through more material consumption. Those things feel good, of course, but if one’s self-esteem is built on external conditions, then one’s self-esteem inevitably collapses when those conditions are taken away. Self-love means letting yourself fuck up and embracing that. It means acknowledging the mess that we are and being OK with it. It is a kind and gentle attitude toward one’s self. It means allowing ourselves to feel whatever we feel without judgment but with love and attention, with the tender, soft heart of bodhicitta. When we allow this to happen, we can feel actual joy in life. As I’ve said before, “doing” stops being the lens through which we see the world. We can just be, just as we are, imperfect beings of light. 

In my own life, finding an intelligent, compassionate psychotherapist was incredibly helpful in exploring my own “awakened mind.” So was quitting social media. But most importantly, meditation helped transform my attitude toward myself. Lama John Makransky’s teachings on love and compassion were particularly instrumental in helping awaken my bodhicitta. 

With some practice, patience, and kindness toward ourselves, we can start living each day with a little more openness. And maybe that openness is the antidote we need in today’s complex and competitive world. 

The post Against Perfectionism (or How to Enjoy Being a Fuck-Up) appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Bodhicitta (Skt., translated as “awakening mind” or “thought of enlightenment”) is the commitment to embark on a path of awakening and be a bodhisattva, one dedicated to the liberation all beings. Bodhicitta is born of compassion, the desire to free all beings from suffering, even those who wish us harm or consider us enemies. One of the foundations of the Mahayana tradition, bodhicitta is woven into many of its teachings.

Bodhicitta is central to the bodhisattva vow, a commitment common to many Mahayana Buddhist traditions. If you visit different dharma centers, in the liturgy you will find many variations of the following four lines:

Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to save them.
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to put an end to them.
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them.
The Buddha Way is unattainable; I vow to embody it.

Practitioners take this vow because they identify with all beings—recognizing that all are interconnected—and wish to attain enlightenment in order to free them. Bodhisattvas vow to defer their own enlightenment until all beings are freed from samsara (the cycle of life and death). The bodhisattva path is available not just to ordained monastics but to anyone willing to undertake its considerable challenges.

Bodhicitta can also be viewed in both relative and absolute terms. Relative bodhicitta refers to the intention to embark on the bodhisattva path for the sake of all beings. Absolute bodhicitta is the realization that all phenomena are essentially empty—without essence, or self-existence. Bodhicitta practices in contemporary Buddhism thus often weave together practices for cultivating compassion and generosity with those that deepen one’s understanding of emptiness.

The text that is perhaps most closely associated with bodhicitta is Shantideva’s 8th-century work The Way of the Bodhisattva [Skt., Bodhicaryavatara]. Bodhicitta is also described in such Mahayana texts as the Flower Ornament Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, and Gampopa’s Jewel Ornament of Liberation.

All the bodhisattva-mahasattvas, who undertake
the practice of meditation, should cherish one thought only: “When I attain perfect wisdom,
I will liberate all sentient beings in every realm of the universe.”

—Diamond Sutra, trans. Mu Soeng

The post What Is Bodhicitta? appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Welcome back for week 3 of Tricycle Meditation Month, our annual challenge to sit all 31 days of January with teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. 

If you’re just joining us, Mingyur Rinpoche is a master of the Karma Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism and the leader of the Tergar Meditation Community, a global network of Buddhist meditation centers. Mingyur Rinpoche is leading a series of four free guided meditation videos on The Bodhisattva’s Path of Meditation, with teachings inspired by Shantideva’s classic text The Way of the Bodhisattva. Each Monday, we will release a new video that builds on the previous week’s teachings.

In this week’s video, Mingyur Rinpoche explains the concept of bodhicitta—bodhi meaning enlightened and citta meaning mind—or the mind of enlightenment. Building off of the previous weeks’ teachings on happiness and the true causes of happiness, Mingyur Rinpoche leads us in a meditation in which we wish that all beings fully recognize their true nature of innate goodness and be free from suffering. This wish to help others and for all beings to be enlightened, he explains, is known as aspiration bodhicitta. Then, if we integrate this wish to benefit others into our practice and our everyday lives, it becomes the application of bodhicitta.

Download a transcript of this talk. It has been edited for clarity.

Meditation Month is free for all participants. Tricycle is here to support your journey with helpful articles, a live call on January 31 with meditation teacher Myoshin Kelley, a Facebook discussion group, and other free resources for meditation and Buddhist practice. Visit tricycle.org/mm22 to learn more.

This week’s Meditation Month articles:

• “One-Breath Meditation” by Ken McLeod
• “Crossing the Ocean” by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, edited by Douglas John Imbrogno
• “Emptying into Spaciousness” by Jakusho Kwong-roshi
• “Jhana: The Spice Your Meditation Has Been Missing” by Dr. Jay Michaelson
• “The Unbinding” by Vanessa Zuisei Goddard
• “Why Are We So Hard on Ourselves” by Mark Coleman

To keep up with all of our Meditation Month offerings, sign up for our newsletter using the form below.

♦

The post Meditation Month 2022: Wishing Happiness for All Beings  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The greatest love and compassion is wanting to help all beings. Because beings are limitless—immeasurable—our love and compassion become immeasurable. That’s how we develop bodhicitta — bodhi meaning “enlightenment,” and citta meaning “mind.” We all have this enlightened nature, no matter who we are. Even crocodiles, ants, and mosquitoes. All of us have this wonderful enlightened nature. Nature-wise, we are equal and pure. Our fundamental nature is like the sky.

Ignorance creates this world, body, subject and object, grasping, perception, and concepts—all of which becomes like a prison. Then, we become the crocodiles or humans. But, on the fundamental level, everybody has an opportunity or chance, and wishing to help all beings fully connect with their true nature is bodhicitta: the greatest purpose. 

Now I would like to read some verses from the first chapter of The Way of the Bodhisattva, [by Indian Buddhist monk Shantideva]. 

Those who wish to crush the many sorrows of existence,

Who wish to quell the pain of living beings,

Who wish to have experience of a myriad joys

Should never turn away from bodhicitta.

— Shantideva’s chapter 1, verse 8

Shantideva is saying that if we really want to help countless beings to be free from suffering and problems, and if we really want to help other beings connect with happiness and the causes of happiness, then we need bodhicitta. Once we develop bodhicitta—once we set that intention, purpose, or motivation—then all action comes automatically.

In ancient times, there was a saying: “When the king goes, all the retinue goes, too.” Another example: when the sun rises, the sunlight comes along with it. In other words, things come slowly—not right away. But eventually, bodhicitta comes spontaneously. So if we really want to help others, we first help ourselves to develop this great, genuine motivation. Then, after that, whatever we do becomes genuine, and it will have a really deep impact upon others.

Should bodhicitta come to birth

In those who suffer, chained in prisons of samsara,

In that instant they are called the children of the blissful one,

Revered by all the world, by gods and humankind.

— Shantideva’s chapter 1, verse 9

Although you are in samsara, and it looks like you are weak, have a lot of mental afflictions, have karmic imprints, and so many different things, the moment you develop bodhicitta for one second, you become precious. You become the child of all the enlightened ones and a source of respect even for gods, goddesses, and all beings in the world. 

There is a story that Shakyamuni Buddha was, in a previous life, a potter who was born into a family of potters. He saw one buddha, and he was so happy and inspired, he offered that buddha a piece of clay pottery. He really wanted to develop bodhicitta. “I would like to be like you. You are helping many beings. From today on, I really want to help all beings and to help connect all beings to their true nature. Therefore, I am going to follow the path.”

In that instant, the Buddha was developed. Just one second was the cause for enlightenment of  Shakyamuni Buddha. He came into this world because of that instant motivation. Shakyamuni Buddha gave great teachings, which many people followed to achieve liberation. Just one second was the cause of all that. 

For like the supreme substance of the alchemists,

It takes our impure flesh and makes of it

The body of a Buddha, jewel beyond all price.

Such is bodhicitta. Let us grasp it firmly!

— Shantideva’s chapter 1, verse 10

Here, Shantideva is giving the example of alchemy. This comes from an ancient story of a special potion or magic, perhaps liquid. Whenever this liquid touches iron, the iron becomes gold. If we had that now, it would be good, no? I am just kidding. But we can use any example. Similarly, bodhicitta is almost like alchemy. Once we have bodhicitta, even actions that are neither positive nor negative, but neutral, become meaningful. Even when we sleep or are just wandering here and there, virtue continues to develop because of bodhicitta.

This is true even though we are born with this flesh and blood body, with suffering, crazy monkey mind, and sometimes diseases. Life is up and down, like the waves of the ocean—or like the stock market. We all make mistakes. But if we develop bodhicitta, then we are on a great journey—a great, meaningful path. Eventually, bodhicitta will transform our lives, minds, and bodies, like alchemy.

Since the boundless wisdom of the only guide of beings

Perfectly examined and perceived its priceless worth,

Those who wish to leave this state of wandering

Should hold well to this precious bodhicitta.

– Shantideva’s chapter 1, verse 11

Here, the meaning is that once you develop bodhicitta, you become the helper of beings, the servant of beings, or the leader to help other beings. Whatever you call it, the meaning is the same. What you need is the motivation of bodhicitta. Once you hold this bodhicitta, then your benefit to other beings comes spontaneously. Once a person has bodhicitta, then whoever sees that person feels the impact. What we learn from words is only seven percent, right? The other 93 percent is nonverbal. That is when the connection comes. That is when positive influence and genuine transformation comes. 

All other virtues, like the plantain tree,

Produce their fruit, but then their force is spent.

Alone the marvelous tree of bodhicitta

Constantly bears fruit and grows unceasingly.

– Shantideva’s chapter 1, verse 12

Whatever virtuous deeds we do without bodhicitta—even generosity, social work, or meditation—the benefit is limited. That is because you have set your mind to a meaning that has limitations. Normally, people think, “I just want to help, that is all.” Or, “I want to help just to free myself from samsara.” Or, “I want to help because it is a good thing to do.” Or “I want to help because I see there is some problem. Maybe I will just help remove that problem, and that is all.” But if you help others through bodhicitta, that helping of others becomes a wheel of accumulating virtue that purifies negativity, and gives us greater and greater karma that can enable us to help more genuinely and powerfully in the future.

Therefore, once we develop bodhicitta, the results never cease. They come back here and there, again and again. That is because you have set the motivation: “I want to help all beings until they fully recognize their true nature and are freed from suffering completely.” 

If you want to go somewhere, you may think, “Okay, I want to go from here to there in one hour.” You have to set that goal or motivation. Then the action is finished. After one hour, you will finish the journey. If you set a goal of one thousand miles, then you will keep going because of that motivation. You will look for solutions, have courage even though there will be obstacles, and you might think of different ways you can travel that one thousand miles. But if you do not have the motivation in the first place, even if you have a good car, maybe a jet flight, maybe even a rocket, you will not reach that place. Likewise, the motivation of bodhicitta is really important.

Now we will do a simple meditation practice.

Please keep your spine loosely straight. Feel your body, and relax your mind and body together. Appreciate that “I am going to learn bodhicitta — love, compassion, and bodhicitta. This is wonderful.

The post Reading <i>The Way of the Bodhisattva</i> with Mingyur Rinpoche appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

This May, my husband Michael and I met our young adult children in New York City. Besides enjoying walking through museums of art, we saw a metropolis waking up from its long pandemic shock and slumber, re-creating itself in a new era. 

We learned about the concerns, worries, and excitements of our children and their friends. I, for one, found out there is a huge amount of uncertainty in the big city—a re-shuffling of values, great beauty, and plenty of horror at the same time. When I saw so many living in the street, stores boarded up, and countless others seemingly aimless, wandering around, I felt a deep ache in my heart.

How can we live the Bodhisattva path: the path in which we see ourselves as part of the interdependent, unified field of life that leads us to recognize how important it is to be fully present to our suffering world? That seems what the world needs, from all of us. 

It helps to feel love for ourselves and others, as well as to experience the whole interdependent field of awareness. How do we do this in the long run, in a deep way, so that such an attitude becomes sustainable? How can we walk our world and hold that kind of attitude? 

We need to find a path, a heart-centered approach, that is informed by Western as well as Buddhist psychology and practice, and any other wisdom tradition that can contribute. We need to find a path that is complex yet simple, so we, as humans, can easily become helpful and useful for the evolution of our world. 

First, we need to find support: a mentor or perhaps a caring community. Then, we must learn to rest our minds in the heart. As we get to know that feeling in our heart center, that place becomes a stable base. From there, we can set up a meditation that allows us to feel the whole field of experience. Every time we get pulled out of the wholeness of the heart-field into a thought, emotion, or painful sensation, we learn to reorient ourselves to the wholeness of the field, where we can rest. We learn to hold both the depth of our feelings as well as the spaciousness of the field around us. 

As we become grounded in our hearts, we naturally feel kindness and compassion. From there, we can expand those feelings to the field of awareness. The heart is the center at every level. 

The deeper our love for the world gets, the more motivated we become to find solutions to address suffering. 

When we have a really open heart and experience situations we cannot figure out, then we naturally try to grow in such a way that we develop the complexity and capacity necessary to be of support. This growth shows a high degree of ego development in Western psychology, as well as what we call bodhicitta in Buddhist psychology. Now it becomes possible to touch into the ground of being, the web of life, to feel a sense of belonging and connection, and to help. 

The bigger our heart is, the more permeable the structure of our self, and the more we can think beyond our self-interest. Slowly, our world transforms into a place all of us, as people on the planet, can feel at home.

The post How to Follow the Bodhisattva Path Without Burning Out appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

On Court Street in Brooklyn, underneath the scaffolding of my psychotherapy office, a homeless man waits most days under the awning with a bruised paper coffee cup, asking for money. Everyone ignores him, myself included. It is easy to see why. The rancid odor of urine emanates everywhere. His lined face scowls as he shakes his cup. He says nothing but stares at all who pass. 

I have consciously avoided him, making little eye contact with him, and with good reason: I am an Asian American living in New York City where hate crimes are spiking. Many of the attacks have been carried out by either homeless or mentally ill people. When the hate crimes began to rise, I became increasingly anxious, so I began taking precautions. For the first time ever, I considered carrying pepper spray. I started to cross the sidewalk whenever I saw a homeless person who seemed dangerous. I found safety in wearing a mask and sunglasses–the anonymity was my armor. No one could see me, so no one would want to hurt me. 

But living with this protective, anxious armor began to take a toll. Fight or flight became my only way of viewing the world, perceiving experience as threatening and unwelcoming. 

Last month at lunchtime, I ran into the homeless man in front of my office again. Something about him called to me. Perhaps it was guilt or shame for turning away from suffering. Perhaps it was because I see him often, and his face is stuck in my memory. Perhaps, like the Buddha on his first trip outside of his palace, the man’s mien reminded me of what awaits us all: old age, sickness, and death. 

This man’s fragility was a reminder of my Buddhist practice, particularly the notion of bodhicitta. I’ve heard bodhicitta translated many ways, including as “awakened mind,” but I’ve always liked the translation, “open heart.” For me, this means being in touch with the most tender, scared, and vulnerable part of ourselves—the part that feels like an open wound, the part that wants to love and be loved without judgment. I realized then that my heart had hardened because of fear—that I had shut out the suffering of the world, including that of this man, and that by shutting out suffering, I had shut out my open heart. 

This is not to say that I need to stop in front of every homeless person, give them money and food, and speak to them for 30 minutes about their mental and physical health, directing them to resources they might need. It does mean, however, that I shouldn’t shut down from others who are suffering, especially the homeless and mentally ill. It means an opportunity to open my heart further in the face of my fear. It means a chance to challenge the illusion of “myself” and “others,” to remember the interconnectedness of all sentient beings. For me, it means practicing one of my favorite meditations: tonglen. When I see suffering, when I see the homeless man outside my office, I breathe in all his suffering, including all the karmic bonds that have brought him to this place. Then, I breathe out with a bodhicitta mind, breathing out feelings of compassion and love toward him. With this practice, I connect to this soft, achy part of myself—my vulnerable, open heart. 

Bodhicitta informs my psychotherapy practice, too, and has been particularly helpful for something all therapists suffer from on occasion: compassion fatigue, when daily confrontation with trauma and suffering makes empathy harder to feel. 

Over the last 16 months, I’ve been all too familiar with compassion fatigue. It happened so quietly that at first, I didn’t even notice it. The stress of illness, death, politics, my work, and my personal life had completely overwhelmed me. As the pandemic continued, Asian hate crimes started to increase, and I followed this news with heightened awareness, but also rage. As more and more Asian people were attacked, I imagined my elderly mother being attacked and felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness. How was I supposed to help my patients when I could barely keep it together myself? When I felt constant anxiety not only for myself but for all my family members?

Because of the state of the world, however, there was no time to rest. Almost everyone was suffering, including most of my patients, and I felt a duty to be there for them, despite my own mental state. 

But because of my compassion fatigue, I sank into old, mindless habits, and even stopped meditating. Then, one day, a patient asked if I was all right during a Zoom session. “What do you mean?” I asked defensively. They said they could tell I had a lot on my mind. First, a wave of shame came over me. I was a fraud and finally had been found out, I thought. Then, I almost burst into tears in the middle of the session. It was a wake-up call. I had not been present to what was going inside of me. 

So I began to meditate again and instead of trying to hold it all together, I let myself fall apart. 

Tonglen practice became particularly instrumental for my recovery. Every morning I would breathe in the suffering of all sentient beings and breathe out compassion in return. I began to practice tonglen during my video sessions too. When I felt disconnected or closed off from my work, I returned to tonglen, breathing in the pain of my patients and breathing out compassion toward them. Because of COVID, I had retreated into survival mode and had closed myself off from the rawness of my open heart. But as I let myself fall apart, my practice became connected to bodhicitta once more. Once I let in all the raw vulnerability, I felt lighter. I was in pain, but it was fine. I didn’t have to hold it together. Bodhicitta had freed me from having to pretend to be OK. 

This newfound mindset has softened my relationship with my patients. During sessions, I do my best to exude a therapeutic presence that represents bodhicitta—mainly an open, vulnerable heart that is connected to all my patients’ pain. This approach, I hope, helps my clients feel heard, loved, and accepted. 

As I’ve worked with more and more patients over the years, I’ve realized how fragile people really are. Even the most confident and successful of my patients are just one or two missteps from losing themselves into despair, anxiety, or depression. Yet many lack awareness and are terrified of opening up to any hint of this fragility. So with a spirit of bodhicitta, I give my patients permission to fall apart. 

One of my jobs as a therapist is to help my patients realize that their depression, anxiety, and trauma are nothing to be ashamed of, but are rational reactions to the pains of the last year and a half, and also to existence itself. It is fine to be raw and vulnerable, and that when they are connected to that part of themselves, they are connected to the best, most compassionate part. When they can connect to the spirit of bodhicitta, remarkable transformations can happen. 

So, in the spirit of bodhicitta, the same spirit I hope to bring to therapy, I walk through my city trying to be just a bit braver, trying to be just a little more open to the suffering around me. I don’t have any good answers about what to do about Asian hate crimes. I am not a politician or a community leader. I can’t pass laws or train people in self-defense to protect themselves. As I type, I think about a video I watched earlier of an Asian woman being sucker-punched in Chinatown, and I feel rage at first and then fear for the safety of Asian people, especially the elderly, like my mom. I know those feelings are all rational and normal. I can accept those feelings with an open heart.

But as a way to live, so I can be a better therapist, husband, and friend, I practice tonglen once again this morning, breathing in all my rage and fear, and breathing out compassion to the Asian woman who was hurt, but also to the perpetrator, wishing them both freedom from their suffering. And when I see the homeless man outside of my office later today, the one I’ve avoided eye contact with, I will do the same, looking him in the eye and wishing him all the compassion I can muster.

The post Bodhicitta in the Time of Asian Hate appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.