IS IT ENOUGH?

            I had the privilege—and the pleasure—of spending last Saturday listening to the wisdom, the practical realism and the sparkling wit of the man who has been teacher, mentor, guide to the small Laguna Beach sitting group of which I have been a member for more than twenty years. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, the prolific writer and translator of Buddhist texts, is well known as a Thai Forest monk and abbot of the Wat Metta monastery in Valley Center. Our sangha hosted this day-long retreat, which attracted at least two dozen ardent students of the dharma from throughout Southern California.

            The topic for the day was the deepening of the meditation experience and questions turned, in the afternoon, to the importance of the student-teacher relationship in developing one’s practice. I asked no questions, and in truth was tuning in and out of the discussion as my mind went back to an issue I have never managed to resolve: the need for a teacher. While Than Geoff, as I have addressed him since I first knew him (or Ajahn Geoff as he is more properly titled now) has been a deeply respected presence in my life for many years, I have never been able to approach him with the request that he be “my teacher” in the Buddhist sense. Certainly my loss. Perhaps he would not have accepted me. I don’t know.

            The important role of the teacher has been impressed on me since I first started sitting in meditation some twenty-five years ago. I have read a great number of books, many of them in sufficient depth to have been able to review them; for several years in the early 2000s, my reviews would appear regularly in the Los Angeles Times. More recently I have been publishing them quietly online. Virtually every one of these books has stressed the vital importance and value to any serious student of Buddhism of seeking a teacher. And yet, a student of the dharma myself and a daily meditation practitioner, I have never sought one.

            So I woke this morning thinking of that discussion on Saturday and asking myself yet again what it is about me that has resisted the knowledge that to progress into a profound embrace of Buddhism and its tenets I would need to find a teacher. I asked myself who had been the greatest teacher I had encountered in my life and, strangely perhaps, my mind leapt immediately and unquestioningly to Mrs. Smith, the woman who was my first French teacher at my private boarding school in England. I would have been seven or eight years old when I sat in her classroom, and she scared me stiff. She was a strict disciplinarian, liberal in her use of the ruler on the back of your hand when you had failed to learn all the tenses of an irregular verb correctly, or an entire poem by LaFontaine. In the eyes of a little boy (this one) she was terrifyingly beautiful, a woman to be honored and obeyed without question. And yet she changed my life. It was from her that I learned the love of language, syntax, words that has been the lifelong beacon for my profession and my passion.

            Her counterpart was Mr. Ellis, at that same school, the pederast who took me into his bed when I was twelve years old and used me to gratify his sexual lust.

            I once received, with many others, I’m sure, an online message from a well-known authority on Buddhism asking me what I would be looking for in a teacher. I thought about the question seriously and in some depth—this was a number of years ago—and responded, genuinely, I thought, that I had resisted not only Buddhist but every other kind of teacher in my life because of a profound and persistent sense of distrust dating back to that moment of abuse. The teacher, in my young mind, was the violator and the predator, and there was something in me, some deep part of my psyche, that had been unable or unwilling to shake off the involuntary instinct to protect myself.

            Which was, of course, an excuse, a pretext for a more complex web of qualities that stood between me and the search for, and acceptance of a teacher. Beyond this instinctive, little boy’s distrust there is, for example, a broader more mature intellectual skepticism of all things “religious.” I was brought up in the home of an Anglican minister and learned first the stories then the dogma of Christian belief. But I chafed against it from the earliest age. I “went to church” as a child because my parents took me. When I reached adolescence, I began to doubt. My schools required my continued attendance at church services, but my mind had already begun to reject the underlying belief in an almighty God. By the time I was ready to leave school and home and move on into the life of an adult, I had abandoned any serious attachment to Christianity. If I went to church at all, it was when visiting my parents; and then it was only out of deference to my father’s feelings. I would do anything rather than offend him.

            For the longest time I thought did not need religion in my life. It was pain—an assault of deep emotional pain—that brought me to the realization that, along with Christianity, I had discarded a value that had dwelt in my psyche since childhood; and, with that realization came the longing to fill a spiritual vacuum in my life. It was thus, already well into middle age, that I found my way to Buddhism.

My first teachers were books. On an impulse—perhaps it was a combination of the title and subtitle—I picked up a copy of Pema Chödrön’s “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times” in a book shop in Ojai, where I was spending a week away from the turmoil of family crisis in Los Angeles. Again on impulse, I bought it. And reading it I was drawn to her words, and readily persuaded by her quiet, powerful message that there was relief to be found in meditation. I went back to “Be Here Now” by Ram Dass—a book I had scornfully rejected, without having read it, when it came out in the 1970s.

            That was the start: reading, an old habit acquired the long years of my academic education. I found my way into the practice of meditation first by chanting, thinking that this activity would distract my always busy mind. Then, later, realizing than chanting itself had become the “busy,” I made the transition to silent breath meditation, sitting at first for a few minutes at a time. Ten minutes, twenty. I first sat for a full hour with the Laguna Beach sangha I mentioned at the outset. That would have been in1994, perhaps 1995.

            I have been sitting in meditation as a daily practice ever since. I have attended retreats, some short, some week- or ten-day long---though I have never engaged in the kind of retreat I read about, the kind that lasts for months, or years in distant mountains. I have read dozens of books about the dharma, about the history of Buddhism, about the benefits of mindfulness in daily life. I have read religious texts and scholarly works, books by such luminaries as the Dalai Lama, books by a great variety of Western propagators of Zen,Tibetan, Theravadan and other schools of Buddhist thought. I have shelves lined with books of a spiritual nature, and have learned enormously from them and from those who wrote them.

            And yet I have not found a “teacher.”

            Over the years I have engaged in a good deal of inner conflict (and not a little self-flagellation!) about not being a good Buddhist, or not having worked harder to be a better one. Should I not have gone to India, as many of those authors had done, to sit at the feet of the masters and to have learned from their wisdom? Should I not have made, or be making, a more serious, consistent, sustained effort in my study of the dharma? Should I not be attending more classes like so many of those whose dedication I admire, whom I credit with knowing so much more than I will ever know? Should I not have surrendered myself to the wisdom of a teacher?

            That conflict, of course, is nothing more than another pretext, another prevarication. I recognize that. In my internal dialogue this morning, as I sat, I recognized and acknowledged disturbing qualities in my character to which I could attribute my reticence. In addition to the distrust, the source of which I described earlier, and the earned intellectual skepticism, I confess to a deplorable arrogance—the kind that whispers persuasively in my ear that I know it all already, that I don’t need anyone to teach me. When I read yet another book about Buddhism, or the ever-popular mindfulness, it seems to me that I’ve heard it all before, these same thoughts and ideas, however differently expressed. It has all begun to seem, well, rather obvious. My vast intellect has no need of improvement. Even my heart intelligence has already embraced it all.

            So there’s that. Worse, possibly, is the indolence that has stood between me and the attainment of many of my goals, be they personal or professional. It shames me to admit to having learned as a child that I was possessed of a certain easy-going charm that could be used as a substitute for hard work. I was always able to get by with very little effort. I was easily enough satisfied with good enough. Doors opened and I was happy to walk through, and to be greeted with a welcome on the other side. Kind friends will rush in with good intentions to tell me that I’m being too harsh on myself, but I know this to be a part of the truth about myself. My indolence has served to allow me to overlook, even indulge my arrogance.

            I have struggled with these things, with feelings of guilt, shame, and inadequacy. I have blamed myself for being less than the good Buddhist I think to see in others, the good Buddhist I myself would wish to have been. Still, thanks perhaps to the advancing years, I am more at peace with myself now, more content to reflect honestly on what I perceive to be my failings without allowing myself to be tortured by them and yearning to be what I am not. I am tired of that struggle. It is so much more important, I believe now, to live in as much open awareness as I am able, and work more simply, day by day, to being a better human being, more generous, more compassionate, more loving that I was the day before.

            That, surely, is enough.

LABYRINTH: A Book Review

We start at the height of the Spanish Civil War, a brutal period described by some as the dress rehearsal for the apocalypse of World War II. The story of the attack on Guernica by Adolf Hitler's German bombers is well known, thanks in part to Picasso's great elegiac painting memorializing the atrocity. Less well known is the brutal 1939 Italian bombing attack on defenseless Barcelona--which is the point of departure for the epic novel by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, "The Labyrinth of the Spirits."

The labyrinth of Ruiz Zarón's compelling saga of mystery, intrigue, dynasty and romance is a vast spiral library of forgotten books that reminds this reader, in its realm of mysterious, mythical surreality, of Borges' memorable "Library of Babel." At a deeper level, it is a powerful metaphor for the dark inner conflict in the shattered soul of post-war Barcelona, and post-war Spain.

In the opening scenes his protagonist, a young woman called, appropriately, Alicia, barely escapes the Barcelona bombing as a child, surviving a dreadful fall down the rabbit hole of the story's "labyrinth" armed only with a copy of Alice in Wonderland. She is left an orphan, with injuries that cause the dreadful, chronic pain that accompany her through the dark years of survival through the city's post-war years of traumatic recovery from the festering wounds of war. She is smart, resilient, ruthless, even vindictive in pursuit of what she sees as right. (She reminds me quite a bit of that other broken crime-fighting girl, the one with the dragon tattoo...)

A blend of magical and raw realism, of history, literary thriller and family saga, "Labyrinth" is a compelling read, a page-turner even at it 800-page length. It is also, given the specter of fascist authoritarianism that seems to be reviving throughout the world today, a valuable and timely reminder of the dire consequences of submitting to the forces of oppression. 

CLOWN CAR

Once, long ago, when I was still a young man, I had the good fortune to study with one of this country's most distinguished literary critics. He taught that farce was the only true expression of tragedy in a world abandoned by the gods--and by the gods he meant any absolute and ultimate truth by which would could explain, even justify, our human predicament to ourselves. We have grown, he argued, even beyond the Enlightenment's belief in reason (and therefore, too, science) as a substitute for God, and the fulcrum of that ultimate truth; and have reached a place where absurdity--I should capitalize that word, Absurdity--is the only force that reigns supreme.

I have myself come to believe otherwise, that we humans can make sense of impermanence, even chaos, by an embrace of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths instead of the search for a final authority in the form of a god; that we can find within ourselves a path to the end of suffering without the need for some ultimate power to provide it for us.

Still, looking around at the culture we have created for ourselves in the contemporary world, particularly, perhaps, in contemporary America, I conclude that my old teacher's theories can provide some insight into our predicament. Chaos seems to have run amok, to be in control everywhere we look. We have, some would argue, a clown for president--a man unmoored from the restraints that temper civilized society. His actions are characterized by spontaneous reaction ("We'll see what happens") and he drives a clown car crowded with others like himself and ready, at any moment, to explode.

The hero of conventional literary tragedy is a leader in authority over others, who through some "fatal flaw"--often raw ambition--brings chaos into a previously stable world. The action of the tragic plot moves toward the removal of that troublesome scourge, that "something rotten in the state of Denmark," and the restoration of peace and order in the realm. All of which is possible, demanded even, in the larger framework of an ultimate order that the gods provide, a world whose stability is guaranteed by their presence.

We are, in this view, living in the grip of farce--of, unfortunately, the nightmarish rather than the funny variety of Absurdity. Useless to apply the usual standards of reasonable expectation to what we are experiencing. It defies reason. I'm just hoping that this current circus act will come to a peaceful end before the clown car explodes.

MORE ON TAKING AND SENDING

Received in a newsletter from Ken McLeod, these thoughts on the practice of taking and sending (see my recent book review in The Buddha Diaries) and its relevance to the exercise of compassion. In his essay, McLeod analyses a paragraph from a fictional speech by John LeCarré's character, George Smiley, in which the master spy makes a plea for "the man"--individual humanity--over the group, the belief system, the organization, the political party. Taking and sending, McLeod suggests, is a way we can be a part of the solution, not the problem--what we can DO in a cultural and political climate in which we can easily feel helpless:

"In taking and sending, we take in (italics mine) not only the pain and suffering others experience, we take in their whole world view, the way they think and feel, the way they understand the world, and how they react to what they see and hear. This requires an active imagination on our part, and the willingness to open, understand and experience behaviors and ideas that may be completely contrary to our own values. In the process, we will come to the understanding that, whatever our values, the way others experience pain and suffering is exactly the same as the way we experience pain and suffering. 

"When we send (again, italics are mine) our own joy and well-being, we have to do the same. What would it take for them to experience joy and well-being? How can we send that to them? Again, a creative imagination is called for, and through that creative process, we come to understand that they experience joy and well-being in exactly the same way that we experience joy and well-being. We are not different.

"In short, taking and sending, at least for me, brings me in touch with the essential humanity in each of us in a way that I feel viscerally and cannot ignore for the sake of policies, systems or structures."

I recommend reading the entire essay, at a time when a resurgence of suffering, anger, hatred and confusion tempts us to compound all this by retreating into our own belief systems and condemning others for theirs. 

LOVE ON EVERY BREATH: A book review

Can a lay person like myself learn the ancient Tibetan practice of tonglen? Sometimes called “taking and sending”, it teaches the practitioner to breathe in the suffering of self and others—eventually of the entire world—envisioned usually as a stream of black smoke, converting it with a “brilliant lightning strike” into pure love, and sending it out again in the form of healing compassion.

Even this oversimplified nutshell version suggests the depth, perhaps even the danger of this challenge. You’d think that it requires years of immersion in the study of Buddhist teachings (the dharma) and more years of retreat with distinguished gurus and of personal meditation practice. But Lama Palden Drolma (who, not incidentally, brings all this experience to her book on the subject) is persuasive in suggesting that even a lay person can be taught. In Love on Every Breath: Tonglen Meditation for Transforming Pain into Joy she walks the reader through eight progressive steps to learn the practice.

Those steps lead us through “Resting in Open Awareness”—what I think of as the “big sky” mind—and “Seeking Refuge in the Awakened Sanctuary” of the Triple Gem—the Buddha, the dharma and the noble sangha—to “Cultivating Awakened Mind” and “Stepping into Love.” These carefully detailed initial steps are critical preparation in making the essential connection with the heart and opening it for the real work ahead: the “Taking and Sending” first, importantly, for oneself, and only then for others. The practice concludes with “Dissolving”—a necessary letting go after the intensity of the experience—and “Dedicating” its benefits “to the happiness and liberation of all beings.”

Readers should make no mistake: tonglen is no easy path, as I can attest, as one who has made the effort to follow it in the past. It is serious business for both mind and heart to consciously breathe in, with intention, so much suffering. So it’s important to note that Lama Palden writes with the love, the depth of seriousness and the respect that both her subject and her reader require. To read her deeply caring, patient and thorough instruction manual requires every ounce of the rapt attention she so lovingly describes in her early pages. To read the book as it demands to be read also requires the exercise of each “complete meditation” practice the author outlines at the conclusion of her discussion of each step along the way. (The “on-the-spot” meditation she offers as an alternative in the stress of quotidian events is useful, but is practicable only, in my view, after the reader has experienced the complete version).

This is a rewarding book for the attentive and committed reader who wants to heal the world as well as him- or herself. With so much suffering everywhere we look, it is also a timely one. Would that this depth of compassion which, as Lama Palden is at pains to point out, can be found in every human heart, were more common currency. This world would be a better place indeed.