by Joan Gattuso
For many, perhaps especially career women, the demands of career and family leave very little time for self. Yet it is absolutely necessary to make sure there is time for meditation, prayer, entertainment, doing nothing, exercise, gardening, having lunch with a friend.
One way to begin to bring a bit of balance into your life is to look at your calendar or day planner with a discerning eye and clear one entire day each week. “Impossible!” the workaholic exclaims. Okay. Then revisit your calendar and eliminate just one appointment—a breakfast or lunch meeting, an after-school activity, a volunteer task—each day. It is not only possible but imperative to do so if you are to live a balanced life.
Do something just for yourself that will nurture your inner being at least twice a week. I do Pilates and take French lessons, both of which I love. They are just for me and not for anyone else in my life. Ask yourself what would bring you balance and pleasure. Is it hikes in the woods, watching a sporting event, participating in a sport, taking a painting class, taking a cooking class, learning to play chess, swimming? Find an activity you can greatly enjoy, one that will also clear your mind and calendar. Your life will be better for it.
Think of those you know personally who seem to have chosen the Middle Way. What do you see in them that you could begin to emulate? Balance can begin with acts as simple as turning off the computer or TV and taking a walk in nature, reading inspirational material or meditating for thirty minutes.
The Middle Way is not about never going to the movies or a club or shopping. It is about not making these things your life, the object of your existence. The Middle Way is also about remaining centered and spiritually poised when life is going your way and when it is not. The Middle Way is choosing peace in all circumstances. It is choosing love over the need to be right.
In our world fraught with violence and conflict, it is knowing there is always a Divine way out of the madness. The Middle Way is having the desire to find it.
Human compassion does not come from religious text.
Human compassion is in our blood.
—THE DALAI LAMA
THE FOUR IMMEASURABLES
I AM FILLED with love, compassion, joy and equanimity for the depth of meaning found in the Dalai Lama’s simple words above.
Again and again my soul is endlessly drawn to the Four Immeasurables—Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity. Their depth and simplicity bring such comfort to me at times when comfort is needed. They bring such clarity of understanding when clarity is needed. They bring abiding insight into our ultimate nature when insight is sought.
It is profoundly meaningful that these four—Love, Compassion, Joy, Equanimity—are called Immeasurable because their magnitude is so enormous it cannot be measured. Just as the vastness of space cannot be measured, so, too, is it impossible ever to be able to measure the depth and breadth of influence of the Immeasurables. To master these four would truly be the accomplishment of a great being.
Students of Brahma went to the Buddha and asked, “What must we do to become like you?” The Buddha replied: “Daily practice the Four Immeasurables.” By practicing them daily, you add to your happiness and the happiness of all those around you.
As we practice Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity, our hearts are healed. They soften and become open to all people and animals and to the environment and nature as a whole, seeing all as precious treasures to be highly valued. In faithfully practicing these four, all the madness and nonsense that has kept us separated from ourselves and others begins to be healed. The chasm begins to narrow. Light enters the shadowy places in consciousness and begins to bring forth profound healings on every level.
The Buddha said that the Four Immeasurables are the very nature of an enlightened person. In other words, as we advance on our journey of awakening, these are the very qualities that define who we are and what we are becoming.
LOVE
There are thousands of books on love, I myself having written a popular one, A Course in Love.
Love is immeasurable and so difficult to communicate through the written word. It is not sentimentality. It is not a commodity. If it’s here today and gone tomorrow, it was never love. Love is at the very core of our being. When everything else is stripped away, true love remains. It is our essential core. We do not have to seek to become loving, but rather we must remove all the obstacles and obscurations to love’s presence within us. This means systematically eliminating all judgments and all separating thoughts.
Consider the absolutely most loving person you know and observe his or her behavior. Ask yourself: How could I be more like that? How could I be more kind, thoughtful and loving?
Considering who I would pick is difficult, because my life has been blessed by so very many loving people—from my parents, who truly loved me, to my dear husband, to my precious friends with whom I share a soul-bond and walk a spiritual path. Instead of telling you about only one, I’ll share what they all have in common, for they are all noble beings who personify love. Here are four characteristics:1. In order to be an extraordinary loving person, the tantamount requirement is to love yourself. A self-effacing or self-loathing individual does poorly when it comes to loving others.
2. Loving people are all verbal. There is none of, “Oh, she knows I love her. I don’t have to say it.” Yes, we do need to say it and say it often. Be generous with your praise and acknowledgments. It is so important to simply see another person and tell her what you see.
3. A loving person is generous. Tightwads need not apply. One who truly loves has learned he lives in an abundant Universe and can afford to be generous.
4. A truly loving person has learned to care for and cherish others as much as self.
There are even more characteristics, but practicing these key ones will get you moving in a wonderful direction.
Practice being loving, doing loving acts for others you know—family, friends, colleagues, and for those you don’t know. Engage in acts of loving-kindness throughout your day. Your heart will soften. You will become more accessible to others, and others will become more accessible to you. Practice truly listening to others. Practice truly seeing them. Catch others doing something grand and praise them.
COMPASSION
For many compassion takes years of practice. One beneficial way to practice is to engage in the technique of exchanging yourself for others. Depending on how difficult you consider the other person to be, you might find it more helpful to start to use this attribute with those whom you already love and who you know already love you.
To do this, visualize the other person. Pick a loved one who is experiencing a minor upset. See her in her current state, and imagine you can go directly into her and begin to feel what she is feeling. Remain very centered and continue to plug in on a soul/cellular level until a shift begins to take place within you. Breathe through her pain and discomfort until you feel a degree of release. Enfold her in light and love. Ask that she be protected by angels, dakinis, bodhisattvas or whatever protective image works for you. Then come out of the meditation through deep breathing and feel the clarity and freedom.
What I have learned in life about compassion is that we cannot know what we do not know. What that means is that we cannot truly understand something until we have personally experienced it. When we have suffered in a particular way, then we can have true compassion for others in similar circumstances. Such experiences afford us true compassion.
Compassion comes with spiritual maturity. When we have experienced much in life—sorrows and suffering, heartache and loss—we are seasoned to become either bitter or compassionate. The spiritual person chooses compassion. To be compassionate our hearts must truly be wide open. There can be no barriers or walls of protection. Then we can begin to experience the joys and triumphs.
JOY
When I think of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, I think of the most joyous person imaginable. To hear him laugh, to see his face light up with delight fills an auditorium wit
h joy. He has not allowed the adversities and tragedies of his life and people to rob him of his immeasurable quality of unabashed joy and compassion that is in his blood.
Joy bubbles out of him like a sparkling fountain. Does he have the corner on how one can have a happy life? No, but for his seventy years he has from childhood practiced the Four Immeasurables. So, too, must we practice removing that which would keep joy a faint hope. We must see all the good, the blessing, the beneficial that is contained within an experience. Find what brings you joy and cultivate it more into your life.
Our two little Yorkshire terriers and our adopted-from-Hawaii kitty bring us great joy every day. They are just being themselves, but my husband, David, and I observe them through eyes of joy. So we attend to them lovingly. We are forever noticing their cute antics and poses and relish in what joy they have added to our lives.
The Dalai Lama speaks frequently about all people, all sentient beings, desiring happiness. He regularly emphasizes the importance of being happy and having a happy life, happiness and joy being one. How important has joy been in your life? What would it mean to you to have more joy and happiness? What would you have to give up to have more joy in your life? Do not quickly dismiss this important question. What stories would you have to cease from telling; what behaviors, beliefs and attitudes would have to be released?
I coached a friend whose life record seemed permanently stuck on the “they did me wrong” song. After years of hearing ancient and new versions of the same old story, out of utter frustration I said, “I’ve heard enough. Your life is never going to change until you change and divorce yourself from this unhealthy life-robbing situation.” What I have always known and continue to know about this young man is that he will have his life-changing breakthrough. For now he still has more work to do to learn how to love himself enough to no longer tolerate in the future the abuses of the past.
Abe Lincoln said, “. . . most people are about as happy as they’ve made up their minds to be.” Choose joy and you are choosing happiness for yourself and others. This is a truly blessed Immeasurable.
EQUANIMITY
Patrul Rinpoche teaches in Words of My Perfect Teacher that the Immeasurable he prefers to explore first is equanimity, which he refers to as impartiality, “. . . having an even-minded attitude towards all beings, free of attachment to those close to us and aversion for those who are distant.”
The teachings on equanimity are very profound, and it takes at least an awakening mind to comprehend that all human beings hold equal value—not for their persona and accomplishments, but because, when all the layers of self are peeled away, what remains is the true spiritual essence, the Divine Nature which is all the same. It is one. No matter how glorious or how unskilled an individual’s actions may seem, no matter what they are doing with their lives, beneath it all there lies a oneness. This is what we are called upon as noble beings to look upon.
When we can know this and see this, then we have spiritual sight. We are experiencing equanimity. When we can care as deeply for the sinner as we do for the saint, then it can be said that we are grasping equanimity. When we can embrace all with love, compassion and joy, then we are awakening to equanimity.
When attending the teachings of the Dalai Lama in Pasadena, California, I experienced as always a life-affirming and inspiring few days of sitting with pure holiness in the presence of an enlightened one.
One afternoon at the lunch break I exited the auditorium with the other 2,400 attendees and received a startling greeting of enormous contrast. Just beyond the boundaries of the convention center were about a dozen enraged men with bullhorns and nasty placards screeching at the Buddhist assemblage. They hurled insults at the monks and nuns in robes and at all the rest of us “stupid, stupid Americans.”
I was taken aback and startled by their venomous rage, a glaring contrast to the peace and love in which I had just been swimming. Later I would see that those angry men were the perfect teachers assisting me to learn about equanimity along with the other three Immeasurables. I had to do much praying, forgiveness work and meditation to see this, but with practice the insights came. Then I could begin to see them as fearful of the unknown, just as in the past I had been fearful of the unknowns in my life.
These men were fearful of Tibetan Buddhist teachings and their leader, because their teachings told them there was only one holy man, and he lived thousands of years ago. They were fearful of the Buddhist teachings because they were unknown and not Christian. I must say that I saw and experienced a lot more “Christianity” inside the auditorium than out.
One Tibetan monk was busily snapping the whole scene on his camera. He got close-up shots of the men’s contorted faces hurling insults at him—all the while being calm yet inquisitive, and taking none of it personally as he clicked away.
From earlier teachings of the Dalai Lama I remember him frequently saying that no one behaves so unskillfully unless he is deeply hurting and unhappy. Therefore we must have compassion. In all circumstances life calls on us to practice the Four Immeasurables—Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity.
The purpose of life is to be happy.
—HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA
A PATH TO HAPPINESS
AT AN OUTDOOR VENUE called Shoreline, near San Jose, His Holi-ness the Dalai Lama talked at length and stressed this point on happiness.
In our spiritual life we should never develop contentment—for our physical life, yes, but not for our spiritual life. One of my congregants once said to me, “I am finally ready to get off the road of least resistance and onto the ‘road less traveled’.” To experience a genuine spiritual life we must be willing to travel the unfamiliar byways of the spiritual journey. We also must realize it is never-ending and come to peace with that fact.
To me one of the more appealing aspects of Buddhism is that the paths have been explored and developed and utilized by hundreds of thousands of monks and nuns over the past 2,600 years. They have spent lifetimes solely dedicated to their spiritual practice. And we in the twenty-first century can benefit from that. What has evolved are systematic formulas and practices that, when engaged correctly and meticulously, produce valuable results. One can take these teachings and superimpose these ageless methods and timeless ideas onto one’s own soul exploration.
In our physical life it is good to become content with what is. This does not mean there is not room for improvement. But to advance withoutangst, to be content with who you are, where you are, what you have, with the circumstances of life, to cease from the painful desire to accumulate more and more, brings peace.
On the other hand, never be content with your spiritual life, because there is always more to learn and grow and deepen and become. Each awakening opens a door to a new room in consciousness where we learn to grow and become more. In turn, this leads to the next “aha,” and we once again expand. The process is unending. We never arrive.
I first learned this teaching when I was in training for the ministry. It was not a welcomed teaching. The very idea of it felt exhausting because of the constant demands upon my soul and reevaluating thoughts and beliefs previously held as dear or as the truth. And through the years it has proven to be so. A friend of mine posed, “So is it that we never graduate?” This says it well. There is no sitting back and resting on our spiritual laurels if we are on a genuine path. No, we NEVER graduate.
We may know a lot, but it is the constant journey of awakening and going deeper that continues to fulfill us. As Jesus said, “The birds have their nests, and the foxes have their dens, but the son of man has nowhere to rest his head.” You are “the son of man,” and the truth of your being is that there is nowhere to go to get away from the spiritual work. We, unlike the animals, cannot escape to nest or den. Our journey is ongoing. And with each advance comes keener insights and greater awakenings and greater joy.
In this process of never being done, the Buddhists offer one of their wonderful, ancient formulas. To whateve
r is going on, we need to ask, “Is this beneficial?” “Is this harmful?” Then you focus one at a time on the five filters through which we can finely sift our thoughts and beliefs. These are referred to as the “five aggregates”:• Form
• Feeling
• Perceptions
• Mental formations
• Consciousness.
These five contain the whole of existence when we utilize them correctly. We are going to look at each, asking if we are experiencing each as harmful or beneficial.
THE FIVE AGGREGATES
Form:
This is our physical world, our body, things. Form does not endure.
Pause and gaze at your hand. Your hand is form, and your hand is not going to last forever. How am I treating my body, beneficially or harmfully? Is any particular possession of mine beneficial or harmful? Am I treating the environment beneficially or harmfully?
We ascribe to anything and everything all the meaning it has for us. Nothing in this world has an absolute and eternal meaning. We are constantly making the meaning up. Think of a chair. This chair has no meaning to me. Does an expensive chair have more meaning than an inexpensive chair? Are my thoughts about the chair beneficial or harmful? Someone spills coffee with cream on your expensive chair. Are your thoughts beneficial or harmful? Most likely they are harmful. This actually happened at our home shortly after I first wrote these words! All things considered, I was very pleased at my internal and external response.