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Never have I known the experiences and sufferings which attended my stay in Intensive Care. Due to powerful medicines, unending rejections, and oxygen tubes just to breathe, my mind was overcome with pain and confusion. I realised that it is extremely difficult to maintain awareness without becoming confused during the stages of death. At its worst, forty-one days after I became ill, the condition of my body was such that I became the lord of a cemetery, my mind was like that of an anti-God and my speech like the barking of an old mad dog. As my ability to recite prayers and meditations degenerated, after many days I considered what to do. I did stabilising meditation with strong mindfulness through great effort, and this was of much benefit. Gradually again I have immeasurable joy and happiness in my mind. The strength of my mind has increased and my problems lessened and ceased Even a great teacher cannot avoid the troubles of his body, sickness, old age, and death. In the same way, we cannot do away with feelings or the messiness of human relationships. Even the Buddha had some relationships that were easier than others; the most brought him enemies who tried to kill him, troublesome students, and problems with his parents when he went home to visit. Keeping this in mind, how then might we practice? We must see that spirituality is a continual movement away from compartmentalisation and separation and toward embracing all of life. We must especially learn the art of directing mindfulness in areas of our life. When we do, we will face the patterns from personal history, the conditioning that shields us from the pains of the past. To be free is not to rise above these patterns---that would only make new compartments---but to go into and through them, to bring them into our hearts. We must find in ourselves a willingness to go into the dark, to feel the holes and deficiencies, the weakness, rage, or insecurity we have walled off in ourselves. We must bring a deep attention to the stories we tell about these shadows, to see what is the underlying truth. Then, as we willingly enter each place of fear, each place and insecurity in ourselves, we will discover that its walls are made of untruths, of old images of ourselves, of ancient fears, of what is pure and what is not. We will see that each is mad of trust in ourselves, our hearts, and the world. As we see through them, our world expands. As the light of awareness illuminates these stories and ideas and the pain, fear, or emptiness that underlies them, a deeper truth can show itself. By accepting and feeling each of these areas, a genuine wholeness, sense of well-being, and strength can be discovered |
| . However strong the force of self-protection and fear that built the walls in our life, we discover another great and unstoppable force that can break them down. This is our deep longing for wholeness. Some in us knows what it is to feel whole and undivided, connected to all things. This force grows within us in our difficulties and our own practice. It moves us to expand our spirituality beyond just silent prayers to respond to the homeless in our streets. It then draws us back to silence when an overactive life of service has made us lose our way. This force forgives our failures in the face of our pain. True spirituality is not a defense against the uncertainties, pain, and danger in life, not "an inoculation," as Joseph Campbell called popular religion, to avoid the unknown. It is an opening to the entire mysterious process of life. Lama Yeshe's spiritual training and wisdom did not stop his body and mind from falling apart in the hospital, but his heart was able to include every part of his experience as practice. We fragment our life and divide ourselves from it when we hold to ideals of perfection. In ancient China, the Third Zen Patriarch taught that "True enlightenment and wholeness arise when we are without anxiety about nonperfection." The body is not perfect, the mind is not perfect, our feelings and relationships will certainly not be perfect. Yet to be without anxiety about nonperfection, to understand that, as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross puts it, "I'm not okay, you're not okay, and that's okay," brings wholeness and true joy, an ability to enter all the compartments of our life, to feel every feeling, to live in our body, and to know a true freedom. To end our compartmentalisation we do not need to gain some special knowledge. We need less "knowing" about how life should be and more openness to its mystery. The purity that we long for is not found in perfecting the world. True purity is found in the heart that can touch all things, enfold all things, and include all things in its compassion. The greatness of our love grows not by what we know, not by what we have become, not by what we have fixed in ourselves, but in our capacity to love and be free in the midst of all life. In this spirit Zen master Suzuki Roshi called his students together as he lay dying of cancer and said: If when I die, the moment I'm dying, if I suffer that is all right, you know; that is suffering Buddha. No confusion in it. Maybe everyone will struggle because of the physical agony or spiritual agony, too. But that is all right, that is not a problem. We should be grateful to have a limited body.. . like mine, like yours. If you had a limitless life it would be a real problem for you. Cont'd next page |