‘People say they have no time for “meditation”. It’s not true!’ she goes on. ‘You can meditate walking down the corridor, waiting for the computer to change, at the traffic lights, standing in a queue, going to the bathroom, combing your hair. Just be there in the present, without the mental commentary. Start by choosing one action during the day and decide to be entirely present for that one action. Drinking the tea in the morning. Shaving. Determine, for this action I will really be there. It’s all habit. At the moment we’ve got the habit of being unaware. We have to develop the habit of being present. Once we start to be present in the moment everything opens up. When we are mindful there is no commentary – it’s a very naked experience, wakeful, vivid.’
At every given opportunity she stresses that to lead a spiritual life one doesn’t have to emulate her. ‘Meditation is not just about sitting in a cave for twelve years,’ she pronounces. ‘It’s everyday life. Where else do you practise generosity, patience, ethics? How much patience did I have to have sitting up in my cave listening to the wolves howl?’ The point goes home. ‘Ultimately the Buddha dharma is about transforming the mind, which in Buddhist parlance includes the heart. The transformation of the heart/mind cannot be achieved if we only sit in meditation and ignore the dharma of our everyday life,’ she stresses.
She peppers her talks with quotations from the Sutras, stories she has heard, her own experiences, modern-day life: ’The film Ground Hog Day was a very Buddhist movie,’ she says. ‘It was about a man who had to live the same day over and over again. He couldn’t prevent the events occurring, but he did learn that how he responded to them transformed the whole experience of the day. He discovered that as his mind began to get over its animosity and greed and as he started to think of others his life improved greatly. Of course, it took him a long time to grasp this idea because at the beginning of the movie he was learning to play the piano and by the end he was playing a sonata.’
To specifically Buddhist audiences she expands her theme, going into greater depth and at the same time revealing the extent of her own wisdom and scholarship. ‘Mindfulness can be interpreted in two ways,’ she says. ‘ “Concentration", which is narrow and laser-like, or “awareness” which is more panoramic. One could take as an example listening to music. If one is really listening to music it is as if one is absorbed into the music. As the poet T.S. Eliot put it, “Music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts.” That is concentration. But to know one is absorbed in the music is awareness. Do you see the difference? When we are aware, we are mindful not only of what we are doing but the feelings, the emotions that are arising, and what’s happening around us as well.
‘It’s so simple we miss it. We think it has to be something bigger, more spectacular. What do people think spiritual development is? It’s not lights and trumpets. It’s very simple. It’s right here and now. People have this idea that Enlightenment and realization is something in the distance – a very fantastic and magnificent happening which will transform everything once and for always. But it’s not like that at all. It’s something which is sometimes so simple you hardly see it. It’s right here in front of us, so close we don’t notice it. And it’s something which can happen at any moment. And the moment we see it, there it is. It’s been there all the time, but we’ve had our inner eye closed. When the moments of awareness all link up - then we become a Buddha.
’The Sanskrit word for mindfulness is “Smriti", in Pali it’s “Sati", and in Tibetan “Drenpa",’ she continues. ’Significantly, they all mean “to remember”. It’s what the Catholics call “being in a state of recollection”. And it’s extremely difficult. If we can be aware for a few minutes that’s already a lot. If mindfulness is synonymous with “remembering” it follows that the enemy of awareness is forgetfulness. We can be aware for a few short moments and then we forget. How do we remember to remember? That’s the issue. The problem is we have this tremendous inertia. We simply don’t have the habit of remembering.’
She searches for an analogy to illustrate her meaning. ‘At the moment it’s as though we’re looking through a pair of binoculars and the perspective is blurred. When we experience anything we do so through the filter of ideas, preconceptions, judgements. For example, when we meet somebody we don’t see them as they actually are. We see them in relationship to what we’re thinking about them – how much we like or dislike them, how they remind us of somebody else, what sort of qualities they have. We’re not experiencing them in themselves. Everything we perceive is like that – everything we see, eat, hear, touch. It’s immediately interpreted back to ourselves in conformity with our thoughts and experiences.
‘We might think, “So what?” It’s not important. But what happens is that we’re living several paces back from the experience itself and therefore we become more and more conditioned, more and more robotic. We become increasingly computer-like. Someone "pushes our buttons” as they so aptly put it and out comes the conditioned response.
‘What we have to do is bring everything into sharp focus, to see things as they truly are as if for the very first time - like a small baby looking at the murals in a shrine room, as the Tibetans say. The baby sees the colours and shapes without judgement, its mind is fresh. That’s the state of mind we have to bring into our everyday life. If we can learn to do that, without doing anything else, it will transform the situation automatically,’ she promises.
She goes on to give a comprehensive description of the various ways ‘ordinary’ people can begin to achieve Mindfulness. Once again the instructions are specific, and eminently practical. She tells people how to watch their breath, their bodies, their thoughts. The instructions are detailed, clear. At times her voice becomes animated, lyrical, taking on that ‘bubbly’ quality that she was known for in her youth when an idea excited her.
‘People have this idea that to become a spiritual person you have to become this cosmic blob, which is what we’re frightened of. But it’s not like that at all,’ she continues. ‘It doesn’t mean you no longer feel, that you’re emotionally flat. One still has one’s identity, one’s personality – it’s just that one no longer believes in it. When we meet the high lamas they’re the most vivid people possible. That’s because so many of the knots that we have in our minds and which keep us so inhibited have fallen away and the actual spontaneous nature of the mind can shine through. The Buddha’s mind is not a blank nothing - it’s filled with compassion, joy and humour. It’s wonderfully light. It’s also extremely sensitive and very deeply intelligent,’ she says and pauses to think of an example to amplify her meaning.
‘Awareness is like a surfboard. If you are a surfer you don’t want a quiet lake, you want the big wave. The bigger the wave, the more fun, right? Milarepa said, “The greater the disturbance, the greater the joy,’ because he was riding on top of it, skilful and balanced. From a spiritual point of view it’s not advantageous to be a rabbit. It’s better to be a tiger,’ she continues, switching metaphors. ‘Rabbits are very nice and cuddly but they don’t have much potential for breaking through. Tigers, on the other hand, are very wild but that pure energy, if used skilfully, is exactly what’s needed on the path. All the great saints were very passionate people. It’s just that they didn’t dissipate their passions into negative channels. They used them as fuel to send them to Enlightenment.’
And at these points she seems to come close to that greatest cave meditator of all, Milarepa, the founder of her lineage, whose experience lead him beyond dogma.
Accustomed long to meditating on the whispered chosen truths.
I have forgot all that is said in written and in printed books.
Accustomed long to application of each new experience to my own spiritual growth,
I have forgot all creeds and dogmas.
Accustomed long to know the meaning of the Wordless,
I have forgot the way to trace the roots of verbs, and source of words and phrases
.
To more advanced congregations the talks get meatier and livelier, often spilling over into animated dialogues.
’There is the thought, and then there is the knowing of the thought. And the difference between being aware of the thought and just thinking is immense. It’s enormous … Normally we are so identified with our thoughts and emotions, that we are them. We are the happiness, we are the anger, we are the fear. We have to learn to step back and know our thoughts and emotions are just thoughts and emotions. They’re just mental states. They’re not solid, they’re transparent,’ she said, before delivering the bottom line. ‘One has to know that and then not identify with the knower. One has to know that the knower is not somebody.’
There is a silence while the listeners digest the information.
Tenzin Palmo has ventured out on to profoundly philosophical ground. A voice from the floor speaks out: ’ “The knower is also not somebody,"’ the voice repeats slowly, thinking it over.
’That’s difficult!’
‘Yes! But that was the Buddha’s great insight,’ Tenzin Palmo comes back in a voice quiet with respect.
‘You think you’ve got it when you understand that you are not the thought or feeling – but to go further and know you are not the knower … that brings you to the question: “Who am I?",’ continues the questioner.
‘And that was the Buddha’s great understanding – to realize that the further back we go the more open and empty the quality of our consciousness becomes. Instead of finding some solid little eternal entity, which is “I", we get back to this vast spacious mind which is interconnected with all living beings. In this space you have to ask, where is the “I", and where is the “other”. As long as we are in the realm of duality, there is “I” and “other”. This is our basic delusion – it’s what causes all our problems,’ Tenzin Palmo says with finality. ‘Because of this we have a sense of being very separate. That is our basic ignorance.’
It is quintessential Buddhism – Emptiness, the perennial philosophy – the remedy for all humankind’s woes.
The dialogue from the floor continues: ’This duality, this sense of being separate, is the cause of our fundamental pain, the deep loneliness that human beings feel at the core of their being then?’
‘Of course,’ replies Tenzin Palmo crisply. ‘It creates everything. Ignorance, according to Buddhism, is not ignorance about this or that on an intellectual level – it’s ignorance in the sense of unknowing. We create this sense of an “I” and everything else which is “Non I”. And from that comes this attraction to other “Non I’s” which “I” want, and this aversion to everything I don’t want. This is the source of our greed, our aversion and all the other negative qualities which we have. It all comes from this basic dual misapprehension.
‘Once we realize that the nature of our existence is beyond thought and emotions, that it is incredibly vast and interconnected with all other beings, then the sense of isolation, separation, fear and hopes fall away. It’s a tremendous relief!’ she says. And the audience has to believe her. This is the mystic truth that saints from all religions have discovered – the joy of unity that comes when the ego has been shed.
She pauses again while everyone savours the full extent of what it means to be in this state. ‘The reason we are not Enlightened is because we are lazy,’ she continues, drawing on the discovery she made in the cave of her own greatest ‘failing’. ‘There’s no other reason. We do not bother to bring ourselves back to the present because we’re too fascinated by the games the mind is playing. If one genuinely thinks about Renunciation it is not a giving up of external things like money, leaving home or one’s family. That’s easy. Genuine renunciation is giving up our fond thoughts, all our delight in memories, hopes and daydreams, our mental chatter. To renounce that and stay naked in the present, that is renunciation,’ she says, her words becoming more impassioned.
’The thing is we say we want to be Enlightened, but we don’t really. Only bits of us want to be Enlightened. The ego which thinks how nice, comfortable and pleasant it would be. But to really drop everything and go for it! We could do it in a moment but we don’t do it. And the reason is we are too lazy. We are stopped by fear and lethargy – the great inertia of the mind. The practice is there. Anyone on the Buddhist path certainly knows these things. So how is it we’re not Enlightened? We have no one to blame but ourselves. This is why we stay in Samsara because we always find excuses. Instead we should wake ourselves up. The whole Buddhist path is about waking up. Yet the desire to keep sleeping is so strong. However much we say we will awake in order to help all sentient beings we don’t really want to. We like dreaming.’
It is heartfelt stuff, made all the more potent because everyone present senses she is speaking from experience.
At one of America’s oldest Buddhist establishments, the evocatively named Goat in the Road at Muir Beach, California, she leads a weekend seminar on ‘How to Open the Heart’. It’s a topic she feels particularly strongly about, having experienced a serious lack of warmth in several of the newly opened Western Buddhist centres she’s visited. ‘I walk in and the atmosphere is very heavy, quite cold. I mean, they talk enormously about compassion and Bodhicitta but they have no real kindness in their hearts, even towards each other. Something’s going wrong. The dharma isn’t working as it should. I see people who have been sincerely studying and practising Buddhism for years and they still have the same hang-ups.’
Sitting in front of her sell-out audience, she tries to remedy the situation: ’So often there’s a fundamental division between the practice and ourselves. The practice remains outside of ourselves. It’s very hard for us Westerners to get out of our heads. We approach meditation from the brain only and so we have duality – the subject and the object. The practice has to come down into the heart, it has to go somewhere deep within us. Then there is no subject (me) and object (the meditation).We become the meditation. Then there is a transformation at a very profound level.
‘At the moment we Westerners are looking down into the heart – into the visualizations we are establishing there. What we need to do is to learn to come down into the heart, the seat of our true self. When we indicate “me” we point to our heart, not to our head. It’s instinctual. The problem is that we don’t make that leap into becoming the meditation. That is why we don’t transform. Loving kindness should be so spontaneous that we don’t have to think about it. It’s not a theory, an idea. It’s something you feel. The heart opening up is real,’ she says, almost as a plea.
And then she leads the group in a short meditation. She sits there legs crossed, eyes closed, hands cupped together in her lap, and within seconds a blissful, calm look comes over her face and a small smile plays around her mouth. It’s obvious it’s working, at least for her.
Everywhere she goes people, wanting more of her wisdom, more of her presence, line up to see her. At one event in Madison, New Jersey, she gives interviews for six hours non-stop, with people arriving at fifteen-minute intervals. They come to her with their personal problems, their career dilemmas, their spiritual conundrums, their worries, their woes. She is there for each one of them, listening, dispensing advice, holding their hand, crying when moved. She doesn’t seem to get tired, or impatient. One woman asks how she can reconcile her job in the armed forces with her newly found Buddhist belief in non-violence. A young nun spills out her unhappiness at feeling unsupported in her community. A round-faced monk simply wants to tell her of his own spiritual journey. A middle-aged Californian asks how can she be expected to take responsibility for the welfare of all living beings when she has just spent ten years in therapy learning not to be responsible for her alcoholic mother. A man, worried about the gruesome Tibetan Buddhist teachings of the hell realms, wants to know what Tenzin Palmo thinks happens after death. Her reply reveals that even after decades steeped in Buddhism she has retained her independence of mind.
‘I once tackled a lama about it as by his de
finition I was definitely going there. “Don’t worry about it,” he laughed while slapping me on the back. “We only say that to get people to behave themselves.” Frankly I don’t think this approach works. We have a hard enough time of it as it is. Frightening people with tales about hell is counter-productive – it just makes them want to give up!’
’The lamas tend to present the after-death state as a reward or punishment for what we have done in this life, which lasts for a certain amount of time until we come back again to Earth and start working for our spiritual development anew,’ she goes on. ‘It’s like we save up our money in this life and then spend it in the next and then have to return to start saving up again. But to me the spiritualist idea is more meaningful. They also believe there are many different dimensions where you can go after death, where you meet up with like-minded people. The difference is that the spiritualists maintain that after death you are able to work helping others who are less fortunate, which creates further spiritual evolution. It’s one of the ways we evolve by cultivating love and compassion even while one is in the spirit realm.’
The man goes away relieved.
It is not only the people in the audience who are eager to meet her. Established teachers, also facing the challenge of presenting Buddhism to the West, are also curious to assess her worth. Yvonne Rand, founder of the Goat in the Road, is one. As one of America’s leading Zen instructors and an ardent spokeswoman for the feminization of Buddhism, she has an especially keen interest in Tenzin Palmo.
‘I appreciate the fact that she’s a woman and very confident about delivering the essential core of the teachings in a way people can understand. She is a very gifted teacher. She’s also not in any way sentimental, which I like,’ she says. ‘There’s a rapidly increasing number of women teachers and as we collaborate more and more in a non-sectarian way it will lead to more confidence. This collaboration is a highly creative process.’
Cave in the snow. A western woman’s quest for enlightenment Page 20