Tag: Tarthang Tulku

The Curious Question

On June 29, 2016

I can’t remember when I first realized that there was the event which we call death. When I was a child, I had to walk to school alone each day, and to cross the highway which ran through our town. There were no traffic lights. I vividly remember, a few occasions when I came to the highway, that there – with dried blood around its mouth and covered in flies – would be the corpse of a dog.

It bewildered me, that this stiff, foul-smelling, thing had been a warm animal earlier. Now it was this. It bothered me. How does a living thing become a not living thing? I couldn’t get my mind around not being.

When I was ten, I saw a little three-year-old killed at the local shops, not far from that same highway. I had seen him alive, playing in the dirt with his toy front-end loader. My friend and I had stopped and said hello to him; and then we walked on, to the general store (to collect the deposits on the bottles we’d scavenged along the side of the highway).

As we were leaving the store, there was a loud screech of tires, and a bang; and when I looked, there he was lying dead under a car. In this case, along with everything else, it was the suddenness that shocked me. ‘Out of the blue,’ as we say. The contrast between life and death was there in the time it took for a blink. And, it seemed to me at the time, that we didn’t know when any of us would die. The whole thing was incomprehensible, to me.

Why do we die, at all? The fact that, during the year before, I’d been taught that there was a God in the sky who would judge me some day, this only intensified the questions. So, there were some big incomprehensibles around, as I grew up – big impenetrable doubts looming over my world, .

As a even smaller child I asked questions like that. I asked at five years old, “Who am I?” and got no helpful answer. I wanted it to all make some sense, somehow. And, as my teenage years proceeded, relentlessly heading toward that frightening domain called adulthood, I became depressed by the big questions. “What is death? What’s the point of achieving anything, when you only die?” I didn’t realize that I was resisting this world, this life, that had death in it.

The resolution, though, is not in the direction of trying to answer the ‘What happens after death?’ question. So many of those kind of questions only lead to beliefs, and not to transformative insights.

Then, when I was nineteen I read in a book on Buddhism that such insights do occur; such insights as end the anguish of the search. I began to appreciate that the more important question is: “What happens before death?”

One day a student called Malunkyaputta confronts the Nikāya Buddha, and demands to be told the answers to several commonly debated philosophical questions of the time. They are questions like: What happens after death? Is there a permanent soul? And so on. He demands answers, and says he will leave the community, if he doesn’t get answers.

The Nikāya Buddha isn’t impressed. He says that he doesn’t answer such questions, because such questions are not beneficial – they don’t lead to the ending of dukkha. They don’t lead to peace, to nibbāna. On other occasions he says that these unanswerable questions inevitably lead to what he calls ‘a thicket of views.’

There is nothing more valuable in this work than an inexhaustible curiosity. We learn to foster questions in the right spirit, which lead deeper into present-moment experiencing. We ask questions which are forward-leading; for the change that curiosity itself brings, not for the accumulation of concepts, ideas, views, opinions.

“Answers are not the purpose of our questioning. When we learn how to ask fundamental questions in ways that are fresh and alive, we conduct into our lives an intelligence that applies directly to our own immediate circumstances. In activating this kind of inquiry, we can rely on the great masters and thinkers of the past for inspiration and guidance, but their answers cannot be our answers. We must each individually take up the challenge of knowledge for ourselves.”
– Tarthang Tulku. Visions of Knowledge: Liberation of Modern Mind

An Instance of Enquiry on the Go

By admin

On May 12, 2016

In Enquiry, Focusing, Mindfulness, Practices, Radiant Citta

“Many of us have difficulty seeing ourselves as a radiant and vital embodiment of beauty, capable of wonderful sensations, fine qualities, and inspiring thoughts.” – Tarthang Tulku, Joy of Being
I was mindful as I was driving, when I asked myself: “What am I not accepting, these days? Am I holding anything at bay?”
There is a way of asking any question, so that it’s not merely an intellectual question. We can ask such a question open-endedly, and then feel into what the living is like, in this body – waiting to see what comes there, in response to a question.
That’s a funny thing to say, isn’t it? As though the body is going to answer back. (Which it does!) I wouldn’t have to say it that way, if my culture didn’t have the custom of knowing the body mainly via images and representations; if my culture was more familiar with knowing more directly, with mindfulness and the felt sense.
Where the Mindfulness Sutta says, “a contemplative dwells contemplating the body in the body,” that means to know it directly, intimately, non-conceptually. So, we can learn to invite the whole of life, known and unknown, to show up in the gap after the question; to show up vividly.
In this way language needn’t be stuck in its usual ‘this-that’ ways. Language can become a living interaction, rather than something that merely carries old meanings. Language-ing can stay fresh, when its origin (the body) is included in concept formation. This naturally takes practice, and not a little shadow work:
“The senses are responsive, able to generate exquisitely beautiful feelings, but to receive their blessings, it is necessary to open pathways now constricted by confusion and stress and clogged by repressed anger and self-hatred.” – Tarthang Tulku, Joy of Being
There I was sweeping some beautiful curves on a country highway, going down the mountain, and I asked my question: “What am I holding at bay, in my life, at the moment?” And in response, my body was suddenly filled with light. I steadied myself, and once I was sure of my driving, I felt inwardly again. Sure enough, there was a whole-body answer to my question. Simultaneously present for driving and steadfast for the inquiry, I hear a whisper: ‘This beauty.’
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?” – Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love.

By admin

On May 1, 2016

In Body, Enquiry, Focusing, Meditation, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices, Radiant Citta

You’ll notice that in this project, that I will – on the basis of a particular experience and theory of language-use – use words that are commonly thought of as ‘metaphysical.’ Some modern Buddhist writers have an apoplectic reaction, when they see the phrase ‘’the deathless.’ And, they reject words like ‘transcendent,’ out of hand. These are words which, nevertheless, point to experiences.

I have no doubt that any word can be helpful when used by one person, and misleading when used by another. The difference will be in how the user grounds the use of the word. Does the speaker, in mindful presence, say ‘transcendent’ or ‘deathless’ while basing their word-use in present-moment, felt experience? Or, do they speak only through theory, or only supported by some unexamined opinion? There’s a big difference.

Because a fellow practitioner of meditation has asked me to share how I conducted my mind during the time I was in hospital for my cancer operation, I’ll mention one such experience and the practices which supported its arising, and say that we need a language to describe the beyond-normal experiences.

I was in hospital, and being present for my experiences in my usual way during this crisis, at times I naturally saw deeply into the dynamics and qualities of my arisen mind-states. I dis-identified with many a temporary perception or thought, because such identifications only obscure the present. I didn’t want to waste the opportunity with selfish mind-states.

Being under the threat of death, and being cared for by the hospital staff, I naturally entered into varying degrees of spacious stillness. Identifying grasping states, and not supporting them, meant that I sometimes experienced, instead, a wonderfully luminous openness, a non-reactive state, which remained when the habits dropped away.

When I shared what I experienced, a friend said that I was being ‘metaphysical.’ To me, I was just choosing my words to fit my experiences; and so, if that’s what metaphysical language can do, then well and good. Some of these experiences were the natural outcome of years of meditative practice; and some of it I specifically invited, with the practice of particular exercises.

For example, in normal times, if I seem to be dull, or dissociated, I can either engage with the dull state, to see what benefit I can find in it – what gems can be extracted from the ore. Or else, I can simply invite a non-distracted state, and simply rest in that. To do this I sometimes combine Voice Dialogue, Focusing, and readily-available tantric methods. Different approaches, for different times, according to need.

In hospital, with much going on – the coming and going of nurses, the voices in the hall, the lights always on, sleeplessness from the pain of my body – with so much happening, the ‘resting in spacious, non-dual awareness’ approach was more helpful to me, and so I chose to ‘cut through’ the contracted states of mind.

I would rest my attention in my whole-body breathing, and invite a state of pure consciousness, and, as a result, I would sometimes know the presence of pure awareness. (These two are different, the latter being more fundamental.)

One experiment which I did in hospital was to say to myself: “Let me speak to the one who is in a pure land, with radiant beings all around.” Then I answered myself: “I am the one who is in a pure land, with radiant beings all around.” (This is a Voice Dialogue kind of move.)

Then, I would bring my attention into my body, and allow the changes which came there, in response. I would name the changes brought about by the naming – including the pain – and I would resonate the words against my felt experience, just to make sure I had the right words to say it. (This is mindfulness and Focusing).

Sometimes, I could purposefully expand some of these changes, if needed (which I learned from Tarthang Tulku’s Kum Nye exercises.) For instance, if a feeling of bliss arose (despite the body’s condition), I could spread that bliss throughout the body, making it feel a lot better.

And, sometimes, there it was – a state people call ‘transcendent’! I was aware of a non-conceptual, purposeless, peaceful ground; a mind like space, without object, luminous and boundless all round. Then, in this naked awareness, I had an appreciation of this body and its trauma. It was a very clear, and caring space.

Furthermore, I spontaneously had a warm appreciation of these radiant humans working on the wards. I sensed the texture of beingness which was there in them, too – which was them. Such beauty, whatever the state of mind with which they were identified. Whether they were harried or bossy, or patient and loving – I could see their radiance.

At that time, through the radiance of my own mind, I knew the others about me had that, too. I had such compassion for them. If this is called mystical, then that’s just fine by me. Give me Meister Eckhart over Martin Heidegger, anytime.

What is it about us, which makes this possible? In the first place, I recognised that my mind was doing a projecting job, and I decided not to be fooled by it. Mindfulness and clear comprehension. I then took charge of my own mind, rather than leave it to my thoughts and emotions. Directed thought.

I invited an unusual (non-conventional) openness toward my experience, including toward the reactivity. Focusing, and Voice Dialogue. I invited the kind of openness taught by meditation teachers over the centuries. Most times this resulted in states of collected, luminous presence; but, occasionally a more profound dimension of reality was available: the deathless element. This can’t be invited, exactly, but it can be known, all being well, from a state which has been invited.

However, most of all, I trusted my deeper natural capacity for unconditional, boundless openness in that situation. It is this which makes peace in adversity possible. We can turn in that direction. I should say, by the way, that the ‘pure land’ concept, which I used in this particular exercise, points to nothing but one’s own natural clear functioning, unobscured by the ego’s limited purview.

The limited view of the egoistic ‘me’ wasn’t helpful; and those circumstances weren’t conducive to doing inner work of the more emotional-psychological variety (though it naturally happened, in some measure, because with spaciousness, insights into reality and mind naturally arose). So, in that situation I mostly chose to cut through to boundlessness. It does, of course, help that, through inner work at other times, in more congenial circumstances, I had experienced such boundlessness. That makes it easier to recognise, when it arises.

I’m glad that I’ve had the opportunity, here, to share that process, but my point is that there are non-conceptual realities – realities not dependent on thinking – which deserve a language different to that which we use for whatever has the property of transience, or ‘coming and going.’ ‘Deathless’ is such a word.