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What the Buddha saw is that life is marked by four qualities: impermanence, suffering, selflessness, and peace. He saw that we keep butting our heads against this basic reality and it hurts. We suffer because we want life to be different from what it is. We suffer because we try to make pleasurable what is painful, to make solid what is fluid, to make permanent what is always changing.
Accepting the impermanence and selflessness of our existence, we will stop suffering and realize peace. That, in a nutshell, is what the Buddha taught. It sounds simple.
Instead of relaxing into the basic goodness that connects us with every other living being, we suffer the illness of separation, which is just a trick of our minds.
“Just one more” is the binding factor of the cycle of suffering.
Suffering is the state of mind that regards itself as real. We can spend our whole life trying to create a solid, lasting self.
Search though we will, it’s impossible to find what doesn’t exist, and the perpetual search causes suffering. The Buddha saw the reality that we’re bewildered and suffering because we take ourselves so seriously. We haven’t seen the open radiance of basic goodness, our natural state.
The Buddha said, “I’m not going to tell you one way or another; but if you are real, then where are you? And if the world is real, then where is it?” In Buddhism we talk about emptiness because when we start to investigate that self, we can’t find anything solid or substantial. There’s a sense of self—a shadow. We have eyes and visual consciousness—that is a sense of “me.” We have touch and feeling—that is a sense of “me.” We have memories, thoughts, actions, and speech, all adding up to a sense of “me.” We have a body and the pleasure and pain that come with that, and those things are “me,”
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This isn’t a sin, it’s an ancient habit perpetuated by our bewildered minds.
With an untrained mind, we’ll live most days of our lives at the mercy of our moods. Waking up in the morning is like gambling: “What mind did I end up with today? Is it the irritated mind, the happy mind, the anxious mind, the angry mind, the compassionate mind, or the loving mind?”
If, like the Buddha, we were able to see the empty and luminous nature of reality, we’d wake up from our dream in a snap. True liberation is life without the illusion of “me”—or “you.”
Repeatedly bringing it back to the breath may feel unnatural at the beginning, like having to hold a child to keep him from squirming. But if we keep doing it, at some point we begin to see that underneath the distraction and bewilderment, something else is going on. We begin to see the mind’s underlying stillness. There is intelligence; there’s some kind of stability; there’s some kind of strength. We begin to see how the discursiveness of thoughts and emotions keeps us from experiencing these natural qualities of the mind.
As we continue in our practice, placement is always the first step. It’s that moment at the beginning of each session when we recognize and acknowledge that we’ve begun meditating. Because it establishes our attitude toward the rest of the session, it’s the most important stage. The moment of placement gives our meditation a crisp, clean start. If we begin in a vague or ambiguous way, then our meditation will only continue to be vague and ambiguous. Like placing a domino, how carefully we place our mind in the first stage will directly affect the development of the next.
Change happens one breath at a time, one thought at a time. Each time you return to the breath, you’re taking one step away from addiction to discursiveness and fear and one step forward on the path of enlightenment, beginning with developing compassion for yourself.
With a healthy sense of self we feel at ease. Everything we need is already here. We’re centered within a state of contentment. We’re not too hard on ourselves; at the same time, we’re wise to our own little tricks. We know how we get slippery. We know when we’re trying to get away with something. We’re comfortable looking at ourselves honestly. Our mind is open and supple. We’re becoming inquisitive because a whole range of reality we hadn’t noticed before is coming into focus. With this openness, flexibility, and curiosity, we begin to see certain truths about the way things are.
Tibetan sayings is “Even if you’re going to die tomorrow, you can learn something tonight.” With this attitude we don’t feel so old.
So we contemplate the meaning of these words: “Death is my friend, my truest of friends, for it is always waiting for me.”
Tomorrow morning when you open your eyes, sit up in bed, take a deep breath, and ask yourself: “Okay, what does my mind feel like? How am I going to approach this day? What’s driving me?” Bring to mind some of the different motivations. Contemplate your motivation for a few seconds or as a five- or ten-minute ritual that begins your day. Every human being already has a motivation.
The mind of enlightenment is naturally big and open, caring and kind. It is only the discursiveness of our wild-horse mind and the baggage of our solid sense of self that keep us feeling small and claustrophobic.
“If you want to be miserable, think about yourself. If you want to be happy, think of others.”
Discipline in keeping our heart and mind open increases patience. Having patience gives staying power to exertion. Acting with joyful exertion for the benefit of others strengthens meditation. The mind of meditation sharpens prajna, which sees things as they are. Prajna uses the other activities to keep activating bodhichitta, our lightest mind. It’s light because it lacks the reference point of a self. This also gives us a sense of humor.
Discipline is a long-term, wide-angle perspective that gives us the wisdom to live beyond deception and discursiveness.
We use discipline to clear the road for the future by deciding what to do and not to do now. It’s learning what to accept and what to reject. We’re able to see more and more clearly the difference between virtue and nonvirtue—gewa and migewa.
Generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation, and wisdom keep turning our mind to enlightenment like a flower seeking sunlight.
Generating love and compassion is how we live our lives in full bloom. If we don’t make progress in this way, we are strengthening the circle of suffering instead: doing the same self-serving things year after year, getting closer and closer to death. That’s a waste of time, a waste of windhorse.
