The six perfections

Perfectly give up belief in any true existence¹,
       There is no other generosity.

Perfectly give up guile and deceit²,
       There is no other discipline.

Perfectly transcend all fear of the true meaning³,
       There is no other patience.

Perfectly remain inseperable from the practice⁴,
       There is no other diligence.

Perfectly stay in the natural flow⁵,
       There is no other concentration.

Perfectly realize the natural state⁶,
       There is no other wisdom.

Milarepa, from: Words of My Perfect Teacher, p. 253

[1] Nothing is ever fixed.
[2] I don't have to prove anything.
[3] No amount of hope and fear should ever be more important than how things simply are, including the states of hope and fear themselves.
[4] Real practice is no contrived effort but opening to the present blessings of the Lama.
[5] So it's not so much about doing as about not doing.
[6] Is it even really possible to deviate from the natural state?

6. No need to stop traffic

This is part of the Mind Training series

6. In daily life,
be a child of illusion.

So what is buddhist practice? Meditation! Wrong!

Meditation is to buddhist practice as a medical laboratory is to Médecins Sans Frontières.

Certainly, sitting down is of eminent importance, but it's all too easy to be a buddha on the cushion and a bastard in the streets. If you are not actually willing to change the way your mind works all the time, sitting in meditation is not much more useful than just telling everyone you're meditating. Anyway, you might as well bullshit others since you're already bullshitting yourself. This way leaves more time to watch kitties riding Roombas on Youtube.

Easier on the old knee caps, too.

But if you're honestly fed up with constantly, unsuccesully, exhaustingly trying to fit the private world of your fears and expectations to the real world you actually share with other people, you may find it useful to occasionally ask yourself, both on-cushion and off-cushion: "So, is this real?"

More often than not I find that, no!, this is not real. I've just made it up, or it's temporary, or it's just the distorted shadow of something else. And the whole world is way, way larger that this, anyway. If this is my self, or it's fascination-of-the-day, which it usually is, I'm bloody arrogant for thinking it's so damn important.

Being a child of illusion means not taking yourself all that seriously all the time. Whether I am wrong of whether I am right, things are the way they are, completely independently from what I happen to think about them.


But I do think, don't I? I do have these emotions and concerns.

Yes, I do. Just because something happens to be an illusion this doesn't mean it isn't there. Seeing that you are attached to someone is good. Seeing that this attachement is illusory is very good. But concluding from that that you're not really attached is very, véry dumb. And again, it's arrogant, in this case because I'm according more value to one thought over an other, just because I happen to identify with it more.

The mind training here is to simply keep in touch with reality; it's not about philosophizing your feelings away. If you happen to be angry, by all means, be angry. It's just that when all you can see is the anger you're really making a fool of yourself. Reality is so much larger!

Being a child of illusion is seeing that the real world is big enough to tolerate a little anger. There's no need to stop traffic just because I'm feeling something.

Maybe it's not that the show must go on but it does, yeah? Why not get out there, relax and enjoy it?

image: Mexico city traffic, CC by stevec77

32. The Dude abides

This is part of the Mind Training series

32. Don't lie in ambush.

Oh, I'm so sure what the future will be like! I never leave my home without small change, my cell phone and a six pack of desiccated I-Told-You-So!™. I have no need for time to actually pass and for stuff to actually happen, thank you. I cannot be surprised, for I am a highly trained Ninja of Gloom. Watch me punch myself in the groin at the snapping of a twig!


This does not make me any happier.

This does not make it any easier for me to make others happy.

Basically, as long as Endemol doesn't want to buy my life for daytime TV, it just leaves me cranky, tired and impoverished in so many ways it's a miracle the UN do not intervene (although it's propably the Chinese veto again, defending my sovereign rights to repress my own populace).

Actually, how I end up dealing with my own preemptive angstiness is probably what decides whether I get more juvenile as I age or actually turn out, at some point, mature. Consider the following two sections the canonical continuation of Blinde Schildpads Course in Depression. I leave it up to the reader to decide which of the Legs of The Trousers of Mental Hygiene to slide down.

The Left Leg of Damnation

Okay, so you're sure your life from this point onwards will suck. You also know that this is a bovine fecal sentiment. You know this because I just told you, and, well, because you're not a retard.

But still, undeniably, you feel how you feel, even though you don't want to feel how you feel. So there's obviously something wrong with you, right? You can't stop feeling this way because you're mind is somehow broken. Kaput. Unsalvageable. Maybe you're ill. Or insane. Or evil.

So by all means, try fighting your demons. But it's no use: it becomes increasingly clear the end boss is you. At which point you have successfully general- and internalized yourself into a nice double bind.

Now sit down in a corner and wait to be right to fear the future. Because you will be.

The Right Leg of Letting Go

Okay, so you're sure your life from this point onwards will suck. You also know that this is a bovine fecal sentiment. You know this because I just told you, and, well, because you're not a retard.

But still, undeniably, you feel how you feel, even though you don't want to feel how you feel. But this is what the mind does, right? It perceives (imperfectly), interprets (imperfectly), thinks (imperfectly) and projects (whaddaya know: imperfectly). Mind is lossy.

My expectations have turned out to be right countless times before. But then again, I've been wrong at least as often. And in any case, what happened generally happened, so there's no reason to think that what will happen won't, just because I feel it might (or might not, whatever the case may be)*. All these thoughts are just part of the scenery.

Thing is, life continues and I continue with it. This is, somewhat surprisingly, a joyful thing. It means that the bad stuff will always go away and the good stuff will always come. And as long as I'm willing to deal with the insecurity of never knowing exactly where I might end up, it's at least certain that I will end up somewhere instead of remaining stuck in what I think I know.

Letting go means admitting there might not actually be anything wrong. With yourself or with the world. Or with how you feel. Even if it turns out you weren't right, either.

Now get of your ass and let the next thing happen. And the next. And the next. See if you don't smile most of the time.

*) Yes, I have been reading David Foster Wallace. Now go read that sentence again. It will make sense if you want it to.

16. The 24/7 love monkey

This is part of the Mind Training series

16. Work with whatever you encounter, immediately.

To do something special you need to prepare in advance. Packing your bags to go on a vacation. Scrubbing up to perform open heart surgery. The right time has to be decided, the right circumstances have to be created.

Training the mind is not like that. In stead of preparing in advance you just have to be prepared. There's a subtle difference there. Being prepared, in this context, means you have "let the mind become", semkye in Tibetan. Raise the mind of enlightenment, or bodhichitta, The Heart That Is Not Fooled Into Thinking That Others Don't Need To Be Happy.

Now, bodhichitta is not something you can force yourself to have. But when it unexpectedly appears (which is does, again and again and again*), recognize it. Nurture it. Don't try to sweep it under the carpet because it feels a bit weak, sad and unmanly. This enlightenment mind is the most precious thing you will ever have.

The lojong, then, is not about doing something special, in a special way and in a special time and place. In most of life's situations there are no real options available anyway. You just do what you do anyway, infused with attention and bodhichitta. Don't fret about getting it right or wrong. Allow yourself to make mistakes. If you make a mistake (e.g. if you notice yourself trying to find something/-one to blame for something), just correct and continue.

Having your bodhichitta at the ready means opening up your mind and pulling away the curtains of expectation and self-importance. Let the birds of your own and others' feelings fly in and out as they please. Have a bed ready for when anything wants to stay. Leave the door unlocked for when anything wants to leave.

Time to take one to the spiritual nut sack, my friends: the real teaching of slogan 16 is that dharma practice is not special. It does not need special circumstances. It will not make you a very special person. (It probably won't leave you a four-armed, luminous freak like Chenrezig [which would have definite social disadvantages, anyway. Imagine trying to find a decent T-Shirt...]). No waiting around for the "right" moment, in other words.

Nope, training our minds in openness will not change the fact we are bipedal, opposably thumbed primates with (most likely) rather unremarkable lives. But it will give us more sanity, relaxation and kindness.

The real bodhisattva is a 24/7 chilled-out love monkey.

*) Like a flash of lightning, revealing all the dark had hidden, as Shantideva has it.

Training the mind 1: get out of the way!

Lojong is not a topic many buddhist practicioners I know find exciting from the word go. Most tend to be drawn to the Jedi-stuff first: mantras, mahmudra, dzogchen, enlightened joy. Meditation is good, too, as meditation will obviously instantly provide anyone the most extraordinary experiences of truth and beauty to be had this side of most narcotics laws.

Lojong, or Mind Training, on the other hand, tends to look and feel like slightly masochistic self-help advice for upstanding citizens who want to make a valuable contribution to society.

"Work on your strongest reactions first."
"Don't rely on sense of duty."
"Don't be competitive."

Not very T-shirt-worthy, ain't it?

But y'all hunker down in the dust now, and listen up to the Turtle: this is the stuff practice really comes down to. Don't be a bastard. Put others first. Don't blame the world for your own silly choices.

I am no teacher or realized bodhisattva or anything, but I feel I can pretty much guarantee that nobody will ever recognize the nature of mind without being willing to sit down and sort through the banana peels and sausage skins of their actual, daily lives. Gettin' the crud of samsara out from under the fingernails of your mind.

Now, much is being made of the fact that the dharma is supposed to make you feel happy. At least two high profile meditators are publicly known as the happiest man on earth: Matthieu Ricard and Mingyur Rinpoche. And it does, mah' friends, the dharma will make you insanely happy. But the practice of the dharma is not always about being happy right here and right now. Often it is about feeling shit.

And then doing something constructive with that.

The very first thing in the Mind Training is simply to get out of the way*. Realise that your life is not about what you happen to think you are or what you feel you want. Usually we spend incredible amounts of time keeping our emotional slacks from sliding down our thighs, becoming too tired to treat ourselves and the people around as the precious, vibrant jewels of life and awareness we are.

The important thing to remember here (and why Lojong ≠ masochism) is that we shouldn't feel we have to let go of our self-importance because it's bad. No, we want do it because it's silly. And useless. And, when you get right down to it, simply not true.

Brad Warner, a bloggin' obnoxious prick and Zen teacher, said something the other day which nicely fits with this premise:

The trick is to see that none of the ways you characterize yourself are ultimately any better than any other.

-o0o-

So, why this "Hello world, meet Lojong. She will be your new best friend."-post? Because, for the coming weeks, I plan† to go randomly through the 59 slogans of Chekawa Yeshe Dorje's famous Seven Point Mind Training and saying stuff about them on Blinde Schildpad. This should not be seen as teaching or commenting on these, actually rather precious, teachings. It's just to see if something interesting will happen. Stuff's happening in this blogger's life which is making Getting Out Of The Way a fait accomplis anyway, so I might as well shed my spiritual dandruff publicly.

What I will try to avoid (as I have done in this introductory article) is explaining stuff. Y'all got the Google if a word seems mysterious and the wise ones among you have teachers if life seems mysterious.

Go ask them.

*) Jetsünma's phrase.
†) "Do you want to make the Buddhas laugh? Tell them you have a plan..."

(images taken from Tower of Garbage, Cambodia, CC by leclercle)