Buddha and the Borderline

by Kiera Van Gelder

  Each week I go back to Ethan half triumphant and half exhausted from the latest conference, meeting, workshop, or training. I’m getting certified in anything related to peer support and have joined every organization I could contact. It’s like a drug or sex binge. I come off of every run more depleted, even though my intention is to create more connection, to belong more deeply.

  Ethan keeps asking, “Is this what you want?” We look at the pros and cons of my choices, weighing what I give out and what I receive. Which of my internal parts are involved? And how much of this effort is really connecting me to a supportive and nurturing community? No matter what the benefits, it’s clear that the emotional reserve I’ve been building up these past few years is dwindling, and it takes longer and longer for me to recuperate from the conferences and presentations. I’m taking more days off from work simply to sleep. And despite my arsenal of skills, I’m becoming more reactive. I snap at a conference organizer. I accuse other consumer advocates of turning against me when they’re trying to be supportive. My friend in the advanced DBT group finds a boyfriend, and it’s so intolerable that I blow up in group and can’t go back.

  I’m devastated and ashamed. And depending on the moment, I’ll go from thinking this woman is the biggest bitch in the world to thinking I’m entirely broken when it comes to making a single friend. Taylor tries to convince me it’s not a big deal, I can make other friends, but this obviously doesn’t console me. I’m not as upset about quitting the advanced DBT group, as my work with Ethan is now the meat and potatoes of my IFS therapy. Still, he suggests that I look for a different type of group therapy, but that isn’t what I want. I need something else—something more than skills, therapy, or advocacy—but I don’t know what. Even the mindfulness work is failing me. It’s like food without taste; I get the nourishment, but something essential is lacking—something inside me, and in my connection to the world.

  23

  Taking Refuge

  It’s early fall, and I’m back haunting the third floor of the Harvard Coop, but this time not to hide in the bathroom or sift through the psychology section. I’m focusing in on Eastern religions, specifically Buddhism, because even though I don’t think of myself as a Buddhist, more and more of my search for connection outside of the advocacy community is leading in that direction. The books I read, the places I go to practice mindfulness, everything points in the same direction: Buddhism.

  And I’m confused. After all of my work to learn about BPD and DBT, now I’m a beginner again. The leap from dialectical behavior therapy to Buddhism wouldn’t seem that far. After all, Dr. Linehan created a significant portion of the therapy out of her experience as a Zen Buddhist. Not only are some of the practices similar to those in Buddhism, many of the same principles underlie both: dialectics, interdependence, constant change, impermanence, understanding the nature of cause and effect. Yet it’s still hard to understand exactly what Buddhism is. For a long time, I thought that if you sat and meditated and believed all is one, you pretty much qualified as a Buddhist—and I wasn’t sure how much sense that made when I realized that was exactly what I used to do when tripping on acid. But now I find that equating DBT’s mindfulness and acceptance practices with the core of Buddhism isn’t accurate. It’s just too broad. For example, yoga emphasizes awareness of the body and mind, as well as acceptance and nonjudgment, and the Christian and Jewish religions have traditions of contemplative practices and compassionate witnessing. So I must dig deeper. As with my exploration of BPD, DBT, and IFS, the route to change means diving into new information and culling out what’s valuable and what makes sense for me.

  The term “Buddhism” is incredibly broad, and it’s easy to get lost in the many shapes it has taken. Since originating in India over two thousand five hundred years ago, it has spread into dozens of countries and most continents, and its practices and concepts have been molded by each culture it encounters. While this is part of what’s so appealing about Buddhism, it’s also frustrating. As a starting point, you really need to understand the original story of the man known as the Buddha and his life. In short, he was an Indian prince who was so deeply impacted by the pain he saw in the world that he resolved to find a way to be free of it. Abandoning his position and all material possessions, he studied with the great spiritual masters of his time but found that their path of asceticism and physical self-denial was as counterproductive as the opulent and indulgent life he’d left behind. So he sat down and meditated, determined to reach enlightenment or die. In the many days that followed, his meditation opened him to a level of wisdom that allowed him to clearly see the causes of suffering and how to be free of them.

  In that moment, he became known as the Buddha, or “Awakened One.” So the Buddha isn’t a god or a divine being; it’s simply a title given to one man, Siddhartha Gautama, who figured out how to liberate himself from all of the cognitive distortions and overwhelming negative emotions and behaviors that keep everyone trapped in pain and confusion. Everyone, not just people with psychiatric disorders. In this moment of profound insight, he’d gained “enlightenment,” a word that, like “Buddhism,” has many different connotations, but in essence means “awakened.” But awakened to what? Some traditions would say this is an awakening to the true state of being. Others define it as liberation from all attachments. I discover that the qualities of an awakened person include omniscience, selflessness, and pure altruism—indeed, the perfect embodiment of compassion and wisdom.

  I remember that when I entered DBT, the first worksheet Molly gave me described the goal of DBT skills training as reducing pain and misery by learning how to change emotions, behaviors, and thinking patterns. In the process, you develop the ability to create a life worth living. Back then that goal seemed impossible, but here I am. I have learned to reduce my pain and misery. I still suffer, but in many ways my suffering is similar to that of everyone else. Now I discover a new goal, if I want to take it on: To be a Buddhist is to aspire to freedom from suffering—not just for yourself, but for all creatures. The pathway to this worthwhile but seemingly impossible goal is simply to practice diligently until it happens.

  And just as in DBT, the techniques for doing this involve working with your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, but in this case for the purpose of eliminating misery altogether. The benefits are extended beyond yourself to all creatures great and small. I have to wonder if the decision to embark on this path is even a decision at all. Logically that kind of achievement seems absolutely impossible. And while I am doing much better, I still want to punch Taylor or burst into tears whenever he says something “wrong.” I see that I care about people, but only to the extent that they satisfy me. Even in my advocacy efforts, I’m hooked on the effects I have on others, and when I encounter resistance, I don’t feel empathy. I want vindication, and I want to be right.

  When the Buddha taught, he cautioned his students to never take his word on faith, but to experience everything directly. Yet it appears equally important to have a guide and a community in this practice. Buddhism and DBT are similar in that both require a lot of support. In DBT you need a therapist, the skills, and a skills group, and the therapists themselves are part of a larger team in which they consult one another for guidance. In Buddhism you need a teacher, the teachings, and a community of other Buddhists, and, as in DBT, the teacher should be part of a community in the form of a direct lineage or tradition, informed by the guidance and wisdom of other teachers. The Buddhist term for this triad of support and guidance is the Three Jewels. The first jewel is the Buddha (and by extension, your teacher), who embodies perfect wisdom and provides an example of what can be accomplished. The second jewel is the Dharma—Buddha’s teachings and the rich tradition of teachings that have sprung from them. The third jewel is Sangha, the community of practitioners and those who are actively following this path. Unlike DBT, you don’t have to put yourself on a waiting list for a special program. It’s up to you to find your path, and it’s up to you
to become enlightened.

  I find that I want to take refuge in these three jewels, but I don’t know how to access them. Yes, there are a zillion books, and in the Boston area alone, a dozen Buddhist communities. Some are pure transplants from other countries: Japanese Zen Buddhism, Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, Thai Theravada Buddhism, Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, and Vietnamese Buddhism. Then there are the Americanized offshoots that form another subset of communities and practices. However, all of the traditions have a common focus on the elimination of suffering. This goal is captured in the Four Noble Truths, which were the Buddha’s first teachings after he achieved enlightenment: The first is that suffering is pervasive; the second is that there are causes for this suffering; the third is that this suffering can be stopped; and the fourth is that there is a true path to accomplish this. The details on how this is accomplished depend on which tradition you follow. For now I take the intellectual buffet approach. I read books by an American Buddhist nun in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition, Pema Chödrön, who writes disarmingly about the need to open yourself to the pain inside you. I dip into D. T. Suzuki, the Zen Buddhist who insists that the less you think, the more you will know. I also digest a lot of Thich Nhat Hahn, the Vietnamese monk whose main practice is mindfulness applied to everyday living. (Dr. Linehan is a big fan of him.)

  Meanwhile, in therapy I focus on more practical issues, like how to get Taylor to move the cats’ litter box out of the kitchen, which drives me apeshit. There is no negotiation on this issue, it seems. Taylor insists it stays where it is. In response, a firefighter who occasionally comes out in the form of obsessive-compulsive behavior resorts to rearranging all of Taylor’s kitchen cabinets, leaving him stunned and disoriented for weeks, unable to remember where to put the dishes.

  I’m not doing well with the clash in our living styles—or the divergence in our directions. Taylor is still happy to stay at home, watch TV, tinker with motorcycles, and go out to play board games with his friends. I, on the other hand, am still deeply involved in my “Save the Borderlines” campaign, and between my growing passion for Buddhism, my job, and the constant advocacy work, Taylor and I tend to see each other only on the couch for our favorite TV shows and in bed. One thing hasn’t changed: The bed remains the locus of many of my troubled and conflicting parts. I still don’t open up to Taylor about difficult sex because, as always, I’m afraid of what will happen. I’m not faking orgasms—at least not yet. But the focus is always on his pleasure. And while that could be called a Buddhist practice of generosity, it really isn’t productive. My understanding is that self-denial isn’t the goal; self-liberation, and liberating others, is the aim. I have a growing sense that the way I’m handling this is trapping both of us in a cage I can’t find the key for, in much the same way as his house traps us in a pile of chaos that he cannot clear out to make room for me, despite his best efforts.

  They say that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. In my case, it happens in late autumn, just after my mother and I have finished therapy and are on fairly good terms. One Friday afternoon on my way to Starbucks, I pass a flyer taped to the lamppost outside my office building. It has a picture of an Asian man in red robes sitting peacefully and staring at the camera in a way that makes me stop walking and stare back. His eyes have that Mona Lisa effect, as though he’s looking at you from every angle. The flyer is for a weekend meditation retreat with a visiting Tibetan Buddhist teacher at a local divinity school, just two blocks from my work. I’ve passed by countless flyers like this: women in turbans who will teach you to reach bliss through breathing, men in robes who will teach you how to bring your mind and body into perfect alignment. I’ve always ignored them, but for some reason this one hooks me. As soon as I get back to the office, I sign up. Then after work I go to a Tibetan arts store and buy a fancy meditation cushion—sort of the equivalent of getting a new pair of shoes for a party.

  The next morning I arrive at the divinity school and enter a hall that’s been transformed into a Buddhist shrine, with an altar and an abundance of flowers, and a brocaded throne at the far end of the room. Large, colorful paintings of Buddhas hang on the walls. We stand next to our cushions and wait for the teacher, whose name is Shyalpa Rinpoche. (Rinpoche is an honorific term bestowed on teachers in Tibetan Buddhism; it literally means “precious one.”) When he enters, he kneels and prostrates himself three times before the picture of the Buddhas on the shrine, then we do the same. As soon as Shyalpa Rinpoche sits down, I notice a change in the room. A charged intensity and something I can only describe as spiritual pheromones exude from him. He looks around the room, but not in a typical way. His gaze seems to be communicating with everyone. It’s so subtle—the slightest nod to one person, a blink to another—yet when he sees me, I feel that he truly sees me. My heart pounds. My little “savior” antenna is buzzing. Maybe this is my teacher? Have I found one of the three jewels?

  I’ve never been to a Tibetan Buddhist teaching before. This one begins with prayers to the lineage: Shyalpa Rinpoche’s teachers and the tradition they’ve passed down. This is followed by short talks interspersed with sitting meditation practice. As always, I cringe at the idea of meditation. Then Rinpoche says that in any meditation practice, the most important thing is to have the right view, and that without this view, there is no meditation. This confuses me, because in practices like Zen meditation, the approach is to not hold on to anything—to have no view, and no ideas. And in vipassana, or insight meditation, the main form I’ve practiced, the key is to simply sit and return to the breath again and again: sit, sit, sit; breathe, breathe, breathe.

  As though he’s reading my mind, Rinpoche says, “Cows sit in a field and breathe all day. Does that make them Buddhists?”

  Some people in the audience look at each other knowingly. Others, me included, look completely baffled. “So what is this view?” Rinpoche asks, then pauses and takes a delicate sip of water from an ornate mug at his side. “Impermanence. The view is understanding that everything that is born dies. Everything that arises dissolves. Nothing is exempt from this. Everything that is conditional is exhausted, from a leaf to a person to a universe.” He stops speaking and lets this sink in. “This is not a Buddhist belief,” he finally says. “We don’t need to have faith in it. This fact of impermanence is self-evident. And when you know how impermanent life is, you will understand its preciousness: how at any moment, it can disappear; your own life can disappear. Each breath, if you think about it, may be your last. How can you guarantee you’ll inhale again? Someday you won’t. But all of us take that next inhale for granted. If you watch the breath, you see that it, too, is always coming and going. You can’t hold on to it. Just try!” Everyone in the room waits for him to continue, but he’s serious. “Try holding your breath.” We look at each other, take deep breaths, and hold them. I last maybe a minute.

  “We live in the illusion that things are permanent—that this body will always be here, this chair, this wife, this dog, this breath. Are they?” I shake my head along with the others, even as I know that deep down, I still believe in permanence. I’m feeling a bit like I did in CBT group when I discovered that so many of my thoughts were distorted and that I had core beliefs that colored everything I saw and felt. Here is yet another distortion, and this one is fundamental to the way we live. Wouldn’t we be constant basket cases if we felt like anything—everything—could disappear at any moment?

  A light goes on in my head. It occurs to me that while this is a condition that every human being lives with and finds difficult to accept, the borderline brain is even more at odds with this basic reality. With BPD, we are always suffering because of impermanence. Our grasping is intense and rigid, our attachments unyielding. Impermanence is our nightmare, even as it’s the essence of life. No wonder Marsha Linehan emphasizes the principles of accepting reality (1993b). If reality is always changing, then we must not cling to it.

  Now Rinpoche says, “There is nothing to grasp onto because thi
ngs are always coming and going. If you understand this, you will eventually be able to also recognize the source of things and won’t be caught up in the coming and going. You will ask yourself, ‘Who or what is grasping? And where do all of these things arise from and dissolve into?’” He arranges his robes and takes another sip of water. The hall is silent. He smiles and the room brightens. He instructs us to mediate on impermanence.

  We sit for half an hour, and for the first time ever in my meditation practice, I feel relaxed because by simply sitting and watching myself, I experience the impermanence inside me. It’s not just about leaves floating down a stream and trying to accept the thoughts and feelings they represent. Until now, I’ve only understood awareness and mindfulness as self-help techniques for trying to feel better. Now it occurs to me that these practices open the door to a different way of viewing reality—a more accurate and sane way. The oddest thing is that this isn’t some brilliant new idea. Everyone hears things like “Change is the only constant” and “This too shall pass.” In her books on DBT, Dr. Linehan explains that continuous change is one of the basic principles of dialectics (1993a, 1993b). I’ve understood this on some level all along, but there’s a difference between understanding and realization. I think I’ve just had a realization.

  I sign up to talk with Rinpoche after lunch. When the time comes, I’m taken to a small back room decorated with more brocades and flowers. I introduce myself and he beams at me. It’s like I’m a ­birthday present, but what’s inside is a bundle of neuroses and struggles. I wonder if my need for a savior is about to play out again. With his shaved head and red robes, he looks like the monk he is. Even so, and especially because he’s barely older than me, I find myself intensely attracted to him. He asks how I am. I know we’re pressed for time, so I don’t give a lot of backstory; I simply list the many psychiatric illnesses I’ve dealt with and the therapies I’ve tried and then explain that I now find myself drawn to Buddhism. I also say that even though I’m a lot better than I ever have been, I still struggle a lot.