Reflections on a Changing World

 So many things are changing so deeply that I and more than a few people I know are at a loss to understand exactly what is happening and why. Some of the factors on my mind:

• The pandemic, with all its inconveniences large and small, and more importantly, the constant sense of danger despite the vaccines and the very real loss of family, friends, and colleagues who have succumbed to this persistent yet unpredictable disease.
• Pollution, the results of which now include not only the steady poisoning of our environment but also climate change, with changing weather patterns, floods, wildfires, disease, uncertainties in food and water supplies, and other repercussions, many of which we are only beginning to feel.
• War. After almost 80 years of relative peace in Europe, the invasion of Ukraine has become a full-scale war of attrition, Europe is rapidly rearming, and hundreds of millions in Africa and the Middle East are threatened with starvation as life-sustaining fertilizer and grain shipments have been severely disrupted.
• The devastation of existing social, political, and financial orders by technology in general and social media in particular, with whole sections of societies often held hostage by a few bullies who all too easily avoid being held to account.
• Unprecedented levels of mass violence in the USA, including the repeated slaughter of children in their own schools.
• Increasing turmoil as corporate, financial, educational, medical, judicial, scientific, and governing institutions struggle to maintain cohesion and remain viable as they come to terms with this chaotic world.
• Unprecedented levels of burnout and exhaustion as professionals in virtually every arena struggle to provide financial, legal, medical, therapeutic, or other forms of service and guidance.

In an effort to get a clearer picture of what is happening and why, I have found these four sources particularly helpful (among many others):

• Ray Dalio’s The Principles of Dealing with the Changing World Order (a video synopsis may be found here)
• Peter Zeihan’s demographic and strategic analyses (many videos, but these two are representative: the collapse of globalization and the changing character of war
• Jonathan Haidt (https://jonathanhaidt.com) in his books and articles provides thoughtful analyses of the sociological and psychological factors that have contributed to this state of affairs.
• Brad Gregory’s Rebel in the Ranks, a detailed history of the Reformation and its aftermath, what it bequeathed to the world, and its ramifications (up to 2017, when the book was written).

These sources have not brought me peace of mind, exactly, but they have given me ways of placing these matters in a bigger picture. 

We have entered a period of turmoil in human affairs. It has happened before, but changes of this magnitude usually happen only once in a person’s lifetime. Thus, it is almost always like nothing any of us have experienced before. It typically lasts 10-15 years. A new order eventually emerges. Whether that new order emerges peacefully or through revolution or civil war is hard to say because there are factors in play and their interactions are impossibly complex. What that new order will look like and how much of it I will live to see, I do not know.

What does any of this have to do with Buddhist practice? 

The short answer is not much. The current turmoil in the world belongs to the realm of human affairs, the playing out of cycles that span decades, if not centuries, cycles that are affected and sometimes disrupted by the unpredictable effects of new technologies on the functioning of human society and the dynamics of the planet on which we live.

The world of human affairs is the world of human affairs. It is not samsara. Nor is it nirvana.

Samsara and nirvana do not refer to situations in the world. They are ways that we experience life. This is an important to understand and remember.

Samsara is how we experience life when we do not know what we are. In that unknowing, we take the way life presents itself to us as real—a world out there and a sense of a self in here that perceives the world out there. Clouded by confusion about the nature of experience and clouded by patterns of reaction to what we experience, we struggle. Unfortunately, the way we struggle is self-perpetuating and it is difficult to break that cycle.

The aim of Buddhist practice is to break that cycle, to end that struggle. That is nirvana.

Nirvana is how we experience life when we do know what we are. This knowing is not an ordinary knowing. It is not a conceptual knowing. It is a qualitative different kind of knowing, a direct knowing not mediated by the conceptual mind. In that knowing, we are not presented with a sense of self that perceives a world out there. Instead, knowing and experience arise without separation. We are what arises in experience, all of it. In particular, in this knowing, there is no one thing that makes us what we are. And there is no “other”.

The purpose of Buddhist practice is to develop the skills and capacities that make it possible to develop, uncover, fall into, or be visited by this knowing.

Hence the instruction from countless mystics, from Ajahn Chah to Rumi, from Niguma to Julian of Norwich, from Chuang Tzu to Black Elk, to open and listen to everything that arises in experience. It is all we have and all we ever will have. Through practice we find a way of being with all that we experience, a way in which we don’t react to any part of it and, in doing so, we no longer inflict on others our inability to know and experience what arises in our lives.

Why is there so much Buddhist teaching on practice in difficult times? 

Clearly, it isn’t to help us resolve the difficult times. That is almost always beyond our power. Personally, I think it is because difficult times bring out deeper levels of reactivity, levels that in turn place more demands on our practice. In meeting those demands, we have to move to deeper levels of understanding, insight, clarity, compassion, and peace. When we are able to meet difficult situations and not fall into reaction, struggle and suffering end. That is the purpose of all the practices we do, from basic attention to awakening mind to deity and energy practice to mahamudra. 

If you are making this journey, that is what you are called to do.

More than a few people who know little or nothing of spiritual practice per se also speak to deeper or higher levels of knowing. Two such are Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Hannah Arendt.

From Solzhenitsyn: 

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. 

Through my own practice, I also came to understand that good and evil do not exist out there. Evil, whatever form it takes, is the result of deliberate ignoring. Good, then, is the result of paying attention. The dividing line is in me. If I can meet what arises without reacting to it, then, again in Buddhist terminology, the five aspects of timeless awareness come into play—seeing clearly, appreciating differences, sensing balance and imbalance, doing what needs to be done, and being in all of that in direct knowing. In particular, others do not arise as “other”. They arise as human beings like me. On the other hand, if I fall into reaction, then something in me shuts down. I ignore or disregard some aspect of experience, imbalances arise, and problems ensue, in me, and in the world around me. I lose touch with my own humanity and visit that loss on others. This, for me, is the essence of evil, the ignoring of another person’s humanity, the relegation of another human being to the category of “other”.

Arendt in her essay Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship writes:

the total moral collapse of respectable society during the Hitler regime may teach us that under such circumstances those who cherish values and hold fast to moral norms and standards are not reliable: we now know that moral norms and standards can be changed overnight, and that all that then will be left is the mere habit of holding fast to something. Much more reliable will be the doubters and skeptics, not because skepticism is good or doubting wholesome, but because they are used to examine things and to make up their own minds.

Spiritual practice acts like a mirror, and sooner or later, you find yourself looking in that mirror. For me, the only question that counts at that point, is “Do I work with what I see, or do I turn away?” Why, I cannot say, but I have repeatedly chosen and continue to choose to work with what I see. For this, I feel deeply grateful, though to whom or what I cannot say. It has not been easy, but the alternative always seems to be worse. In this process, I have to question not only myself, but everything that I think I know or understand. And I think this is what Arendt is pointing to. The qualities that develop in us from questioning ourselves deeply are precisely the qualities that make it difficult for us to accept things at face value or how they are presented to us by an arbitrary authority. These same qualities may make it possible for us to exercise personal responsibility even when it means that we may pay for it with our welfare, our well-being, or even our lives.

Both these people had deep experience with authoritarian regimes. Given where we may be heading, I think it is worth paying attention to what they have to say. We may not be able to affect the course of human affairs, but at least we can live and die knowing that we did not let such authoritarianism, in all its different guises, infect us with its ideology and strip us of our humanity. We all have to die at some time. Some ways of dying are worse than others.

Point 4: Condensing Practice

 The fourth point in Mind Training in Seven Points is a condensation of the essential points of Mahayana Mind Training—the Five Powers. Here, the Five Powers refer to five principles of practice for experienced practitioners. To my knowledge, these Five Powers have no connection or correlation with the five powers and the five strengths that appear in the thirty-seven factors of awakening. 

The five powers describe how to make the transition from practice as something you do to practice as something that is part of you. This being the fourth point, it is assumed that you have a developed a solid basis through groundwork (point 1), are thoroughly familiar with the main practice (point 2), and understand how to live the practice in your life (point 3). 

The five powers are particularly relevant for practitioners in today’s world where we have access to a proliferation of teachings and practices.It is all too easy to take a little from here and a little from there and put together a program of practice that may or may not cover the essentials. Often, as I discovered when I was teaching, practitioners who developed such practice programs wittingly or unwittingly left out important aspects of practice and wondered why, after ten or twenty years, they saw little or no change in their spiritual development. For whatever reason, they were unable to make the transition from practice as something they do to practice as part of who they are.

This transition is often not easy. To make it, you must give up the illusion of control over your life and be willing to work with whatever comes your way. You must shift from working on the practice to letting the practice work on you. When you let the practice work on you, what you think about what is happening—whether practice is going well, whether you are going to achieve anything, whether you have what it takes, and so on—becomes irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that you do the practice. When you take this approach to practice, practice slips beneath the cognitive mind and you feel its impact emotionally and physically. At first, you may not notice anything, but over time, as you give yourself over and over again to the practice, you find that changes take place in how you sit and move, how you speak and listen, how you experience the world, and how you respond to what you experience—in ways that you did not anticipate or expect.

What I present here applies to any practice, but I’m going to put this in the context of Mahayana Mind Training, and specifically, bodhicitta, awakening mind, the union of compassion and emptiness.

One

Let’s assume you are familiar, deeply familiar, with your practice. You have worked at it for a long time, you know its ins and outs, you know the pitfalls, you know what needs to happen, but for some reason the practice hasn’t gelled, taken root, or blossomed—whatever metaphor is most apt for you. Rather than doing the practice, an approach that always has a sense of performance to it, throw yourself into the spirit of the practice. This is a bit like jumping off a cliff. Throw yourself into the union of compassion and emptiness. Let yourself drop into being completely open and completely responsive—nothing for you to hold onto, nothing inside you and nothing outside you. You are completely naked, without even a skin to mark the point at which “you” ends and “the world out there” begins. Practice from there. Do taking and sending from there. Live from there.

In the beginning, do this for very short periods, just a few seconds. Both body and mind often react with shock when you do this, and practicing in or from a state of shock is not helpful. Instead, do this for just a few seconds, enough time to register the shift, but not so long that you go into shock. Do this three or four times, and then rest, letting body and mind adjust. If you do too much, body and mind become rigid and brittle, and this is not a good place from which to practice. When you do this a few times each day, over the course of weeks or months, you may find that you can actually rest in the shift, at least for short periods. Gradually, very gradually, extend the time, always letting body and mind adjust to the shift. Don’t push away what arises. Just keep connecting with bottomless emptiness and infinite compassion and practice from there.

Two

When you practice this way, you experience all kinds of ups and downs. Don’t be carried away by the ups or the downs. They are just part of the process through which mind and body adjust. Instead, let the momentum of your previous practice carry you through them. Keep coming back to the union of compassion and emptiness. With the ups, give away the joy, happiness, or love that arises, and take in the struggles and suffering of the world. For the downs, take in the comparable struggles and sufferings and give away the joy and well-being, the comfort and security, you know. This is one of the great aspects of mind training, and of awakening mind—whatever you experience, you incorporate right into the practice. This is not a heavy handed incorporation. When you feel good, touch it, send it out, take in others’ suffering, and move on. When you feel bad, touch it, take in the pain of others’, give away your own joy and well-being, and move on. The point of this principle is not for you to feel better, but for you to relate to what arises in a different way.

Three

Strew your life with seeds of spiritual growth. Let compassion and emptiness express themselves in your life. You don’t need to do anything dramatic. In fact, it is more important and more helpful to focus on little things, on how you speak, on how you move, on how you cook, or how you clean up after a meal, on how you take care of your children, how you drive, how you shop, and so on. When you bring attention to how you take care of the ordinary routines of life, you soon become aware of all kinds of conditioned behaviors. Don’t try to change the behaviors directly, as many people do with their New Year’s resolutions. This approach is rarely effective. Instead, find a small way in which you can start to change a behavior. For instance, in putting dishes away in a cupboard, drop open and then put the dishes away. Or, if you notice that you often interrupt others, take a breath before you speak, and see what happens. If you always drive in the passing lane, try driving in a different lane. Be creative and sow seeds everywhere. Practically speaking, three or four at any one time is enough, and won’t overwhelm you. Remember, small changes are easier to make than large ones. Yet once a trickle of water seeps through a dam, it’s only a matter of time until the dam gives away. In the same way, once a seed of change that you have planted sprouts, it’s only a matter of time until the way you experience life changes.

Four

In everything you do, do it without a sense of self. Whenever you notice that you are focused on your self, on how you are doing something, on what it means to you, and so on, go empty. How do you go empty? If you have a connection with awakening mind, bodhicitta, drop into it, and then go about whatever you were doing. If that connection is not strong or stable, then take a breath, and exhale slowly. Then go about whatever you were doing. Don’t try to use thinking to let go of a sense of self—the results are always absurd. “Oh, I’m letting go of my sense of self,” is one of the surest ways to solidify it.

A sense of self is closely connected to the illusion of control. The feeling of being in control is one of the more reliable indications that a sense of self has taken over. When you feel in control, go empty. When you go empty, there is often a moment of fright, because something in you knows that you are not in control. Experience that moment of fright, and go about your life from there. In this way, you nourish awakening mind by meeting what arises in compassion and emptiness.

Five

Make a wish. Make many wishes. Make big wishes. It is said that of the thousand buddhas that will appear in this eon, the last one aspires to do more to help beings than the nine hundred and ninety-nine buddhas who will have already appeared. That’s a big wish. Make a comparable wish and try it on for size. See what happens. Aspirations such as these plant seeds in you that will grow into intentions. Intentions grow into actions. When you act, things change. At the beginning and end of each day, take a moment and dream a little dream about bodhicitta growing in you, and then let that dream become a wish.

Rely on these same five powers when you feel death knocking at your door. Not only my own teachers, but Kongtrul the Great, the author of The Great Path of Awakening, all see the five powers as the best way to meet the end of your life, and you can practice them every night as you go to sleep.

Nothing in what I’ve written here is about being a better person, being healthier, healing old wounds, being more effective in your life, or getting more done. These five sources of power describe how you create the conditions in which your spiritual practice becomes how you actually live. Instead of trying to be a certain way (an approach that inevitably involves a sense of self and a sense of control), use these five principles to set in motion dynamics that do not depend on the conceptual mind, but on touching the union of compassion and emptiness that is the very core of your being.