by Joan Gattuso
Her older siblings, who all moved to Japan, were immediately placed in a special English-speaking school for the children of missionaries. Mary Sue, being so much younger than her brothers and sisters, was sent off to another school for very young children to be boarded and “educated.” Most of her education was in abandonment. Some years she was visited only twice by her mother and not at all by her father. The experience devastated her soul and self-esteem. For many years she has worked at filling the holes in her psyche. To this day her pain is still very real, as is her confusion and resentment.
This child lived in a foreign environment as a virtual orphan, and I dare say her misguided parents were busy trying to convert Japanese Zen Buddhists into Lutherans. It is simply staggering what some people consider valuable at the cost of losing their own children and family. As an adult, Mary Sue sought many forms of spiritual medicine, for she was wise enough to realize just how wounded she was.
After several years of therapy and after she was an adult, she attempted to speak to her parents about the devastating impact those six years in Japan had on her. Her parents simply did not want to hear it and would not listen. As Jesus said, they simply did not have the ears to hear.
After that, her spiritual medicine turned to engaging many forgiveness practices. It took many more years, but now she is much healed. She has lost a hundred pounds of “protective” weight, is working at what she loves, is acknowledged, appreciated and feeling good about herself. She learned how to heal her past and love herself.
In my opinion the entire notion of conversion comes from the missionaries’ own self-doubt and questioning that has never been addressed. All their religious practices are projected outside the individual. While engaged in the acts of conversion, this doubt will never be addressed.
Spiritual medicine changes as we travel on our journey toward enlightenment. Many holy teachers remind us that a common factor in all great spiritual teachers is that they have endured great periods of hardship.We metaphysical types do not like to acknowledge the hardships of life. Don’t we just wish this wasn’t so? It’s hard to perceive accurately through rose-colored glasses. If everything isn’t fabulous, the sleeping metaphysician thinks, then you’d better not speak of it because what we focus on expands. What also expands, I believe, is our avoidance of some of the harsher experiences in life.
We need to accept and not be fearful of the fact that there are and will be times in life that are really tough. There are difficult times when we will be sick, when we or a loved one will suffer greatly, when someone we love will die, when we will be at the top of our game and then tumble. There are times when our world will be thrown into utter chaos. That happens. It is part of the journey. Life is impermanent.
When I heard the Dalai Lama say this, I pondered how true this had been in his life. As a young leader of his people at age twenty-one, he had to flee Tibet under cover. More than a million Tibetans have since been murdered by the Chinese communists. Thousands of Buddhist monasteries have been destroyed. He has personally known suffering deeply. The Dalai Lama has compassion for the perpetrators, but do not for a moment think he lives in a realm above it all. It has been most difficult for him. I have witnessed this precious man weep over the tragedies that have occurred, the sufferings he has endured and the ongoing sufferings of his people. But the tragedies do not define him. They have not, cannot, erode his true essence.
I thought of the extreme difficulties confronting Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Thich Nhat Hanh. I thought of the suffering of those to whom I have ministered, know well and have journeyed with. Interestingly, even followers of Buddhism often want to avoid the reality of suffering and impermanence.
Does this sound familiar? We go through a period of hardship, and often we make ourselves at fault. Instead, we need to seek the appropriate spiritual medicine so our lives can be healed, and we can become an example,an inspiration, to others because we’ve gone through the fire. We’ve gone through our own process of alchemy and we’ve come out the other side a different person.
At the spiritual medicine teaching I attended, participants were given a 2-by-2½-inch 3-D image of the Buddha. It is called a tsa and can be held in one’s hand during meditation. If I do not feel well or am experiencing an illness, it has its special place on my nightstand. This Medicine Buddha is a clear shade of blue, and just looking at it is comforting.
Let us remember the words of His Holiness the Dalai Lama: “When things are desperate, there is no need to pretend everything is beautiful.” But let us also remember, there is a way out of our suffering.
Those who recite many scriptures, but fail to practice their
teachings, are like a cowherd counting another’s cows.
They do not share in the joys of spiritual life.
—THE DHAMMAPADA, VERSE 19
THE FOUR FACTORS
I WAS TALKING to a seventy-five-year-old woman who, as she sham-pooed my hair at the beauty salon, was engaging me in conversation about Tibetan Buddhism. “I really want to know more about Buddhism,” she said. So I regaled her with many of the Buddhist precepts for the next twenty-five minutes. She paid rapt attention. She was mesmerized and delighted.
After a while she said, “I really admire Tina Turner, Patti Labelle and Oprah. I figure if it’s okay for them to study Buddhism, then its okay for me, too.” I talked about the Four Noble Truths, the Eight-fold Path, reality, illusions, samsara and on and on. When I was about to leave, she thanked me and then said, “If I talked about any of this with my family, they would just say it was the devil. But I know better. I just know it’s important that I study and learn more.”
My judgment may be showing, but this kind of conservative Christian attitude is one of many that keeps us separate from one another in our world. The woman asked, “Is Buddhism a religion?” Buddhists would consider it a path, rather than a religion, as would congregants in Unity, my church, consider our faith a path, not a religion. The reason it is not a religion is that neither we nor the Buddhists have dogma and creeds you must believe. We both have very helpful and beneficial teachings that can lead one to awaken to one’s true, luminous self.
The Four Factors, which we consider here, are the very nature of an enlightened person. They constitute a genuine spiritual practice. In a genuine spiritual practice we are called upon to engage our intellect, to use wisdom, to use our minds and never to revert to narrow thinking.
The First Factor is based on authentic scripture. For our spiritual practice to be genuine, it cannot be based on air. It must have a solid, provable base. Therefore the First Factor is based on scripture, not just any discourse, but authentic scripture.
In our Judeo-Christian thought, authentic scripture is the Bible, to which I would add the Gnostic Gospels. These, along with the books of the Dead Sea Scrolls, give us a broader base view of early Christian writing. They are believed by many to offer a more accurate telling of the tales of Jesus Christ, his life and his purpose. The First Factor found in the foundation of Buddhism is the Dhammapada and the ancient sutras, said to represent the words of the Buddha, such as the Diamond Sutra or the Heart Sutra.
These sutras offer very advanced teachings that are best studied with a qualified teacher. Here is one of my favorite passages from the Heart Sutra:
Form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form. Form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is emptiness, that is form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness. . . .
In emptiness there is no form nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; no forms, sounds, smells, taste, touchables, or objects of mind; . . .
A bodhisattva can overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains Nirvana.
The Heart Sutra is beautifully expressed in the movie Little Buddha, which my husband, David, and I have seen and enjoyed countless times. I highly recommend you watch it. Look for th
e short, round monk in an early scene talking with Bridget Fonda, who plays the young boy’s mother. That is Sogyal Rinpoche.
The Second Factor in our spiritual checklist are the many authentic commentaries. Using our wisdom, we decide what is an authentic commentary, because there are endless opportunities to be duped. Jesus warned against “false prophets,” and through the years I have encountered any number of them—often self-published, channeled or dogmatic books and teachers.
An authentic Buddhist commentary is Shantideva’s works, or any work by highly respected sages and saints throughout history. For me, for the past thirty years, A Course in Miracles has been an authentic commentary. The works of Unity cofounders Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, along with Ernest Holmes of Religious Science, contain authentic commentaries.
An authentic commentary stands the test of time, and the reason this is so is because it contains the absolute, changeless truth. It teaches absolute reality rather than relative or conventional reality.
The Third Factor is to study with an authentic teacher. A true teacher demonstrates passion, clarity and commitment and walks his talk. Again, I have encountered many false prophets. If you are tuned in at all, your intuition will be communicating to you to stay away from slippery teachers. Here are the warning signs: a huge ego, attracting students through a charismatic, didactic personality, often using his sexuality as a lure, a controller who has all the answers—especially yours and is quite willing to tell you what to do.
A genuine teacher encourages her students to learn to go within and discover their own inner answers. A true teacher is spiritually humble, yet she knows who she is. She gathers her wisdom from years of study and practice and meditation. She demonstrates clarity, commitment, zeal and excitement for the teachings. And most important, she is manifesting what she is teaching.
I heard Sogyal Rinpoche say that it is hard to go home and meditate for an hour when you’ve been ranting at the office all day. When you look at a teacher, ask yourself if you want to emulate him. Do I aspire to be as he is?
When I was just out of college, I met for the first time a group of young Unity ministers while doing a biofeedback demonstration at Unity Village. I inwardly recognized that they had something I did not have, and I knew I wanted whatever that indefinable something was. I wanted to emulate the luminosity that they were manifesting. Today I want to emulate His Holiness the Dalai Lama, or Thich Nhat Hanh, or Sogyal Rinpoche or Jesus Christ.
An authentic teacher teaches not just with words but through the living of his life. As has been said by a number of great beings, including Gandhi, “My life is my message.”
One message I have long taught is that everyone needs a teacher. The ego believes it has all the answers and can forgo having a teacher. The ego asks, What’s the need? The wise one knows the best guardian at the ego’s gate is an authentic teacher. Remember this, even the Dalai Lama has teachers whom he highly respects and with whom he consults.
A frequent common denominator I have witnessed with false teachers is that they dance with their sexual energy rather than commune with their inner divinity. Sexual energy can be very powerful and charismatic and alluring, but it is not of the Buddha nature, the Christ nature. Keep your eyes open, your feet on the ground and use your own inner guidance in choosing a teacher. But be mindful not to be duped.
A number of years ago I traveled to India, an arduous journey undertaken with two women friends, sisters on the path. They were going to visit their teacher, something they had done on several previous occasions. Intrigued, I went along to see if he would be my teacher, as well.
The conditions were very primitive, and we sat for hours in 110-degree heat in darshan (silently sitting and waiting for the teacher to arrive). After the fourth day of this, I realized I was not seeing an aura, that glowing color or light, emanating from this great master (for years I’ve had the ability to see auras by focusing my attention). I mentioned this to one of my friends, and she replied, “Oh, he pulls his aura in so people can’t see it.” I was not impressed.
The living conditions there were quite unsanitary. A few years later, on a subsequent trip my friends took, they returned to tell me that the compound was much improved, and the water was drinkable because the teacher was now blessing it at its source. I found out later that the fact was he had installed a water purification system. My husband, David, calls this “magical thinking.” My dear friends were blind to any flaws in their guru.
Later it became known that this teacher had some very unholy practices, including being a pedophile! Still people flock to him, being duped. We can so much want a teacher that we ignore or deny the obvious that is glaring at us.
This is what I teach:1. Do not give your personal power away to any teacher. A true teacher won’t want it.
2. Do not check your brain at the door. God gave us the ability to discern and reason. Use it! Trust your inner knowing. Ask yourself, How does this energy feel to me?
You may be asking, How do you find a genuine spiritual teacher? An old adage is, “When the student is ready the teacher appears.” And this is true for many on the path. If that does not readily occur for you, join a sangha or a church or a meditation group and see if your teacher is there.
Go on several retreats and see if your teacher is there. Don’t cease looking until you find the teacher with whom you fully resonate.
The Fourth Factor is knowing the truth by having our own spiritual experiences. When you reach a clear state of mind in meditation, you know it because you’ve experienced it. When you see an aura, you’ve experienced it and you own the experience. When you’ve practiced generosity and been incredibly blessed as well as blessed others, you know because you’ve experienced the increased good in your life. You meditate daily and experience greater peace, calm and clarity.
You will know the truth when you experience it for yourself in your own life.
The above is the classic order of the Four Factors. The Dalai Lama has taught that the Four Factors are often reversed for the individual in this manner:1. We have a genuine spiritual experience. This comes about, as it did for the Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree, from deep inner reflection. We are given a taste of realization. We own it. It is ours.
2. This leads us on our path to develop a conviction to study with authentic teachers, realized beings. For me it has been the Dalai Lama, along with a few others.
3. As we study with an individual, then we are led to seek out great works that will inspire us to go deeper in our studies. As we contemplate these teachings over time, then we are led to just the right books and retreats and courses of study.
4. Our own study and appreciation of the Scriptures themselves develops, and we are drawn to read and study the original material—perhaps even doing some of our own research.
The Buddha said, “Do not believe something to be true because many wise ones say it’s true. Do not believe something to be true because I say it’s true. Do not believe something to be true because the scriptures say it’s true. Believe something to be true because in your heart you know it’s true.”
In all your spiritual pursuits, learn to listen to your heart and trust your heart, and you will be guided as to what order of the Four Factors is best for you—classic or the reversed.
Don’t get selfishly attached to anything, for trying to hold on to it will bring you pain.
—THE DHAMMAPADA
HUNGRY GHOST
THE COSMIC HUMOR is not lost on me as I begin this topic, for I have just begun a several-day fast of warm broth and water. It’s too early in the process to actually be hungry, but it is never too early in the process for the monkey mind to begin obsessing over the prospect of possible future hunger.
Upon hearing of the concept of Hungry Ghost, I have found the ideas so accurately descriptive and on the mark as to how, in our human mind, we are so similar to a hungry ghost that can never be satisfied.
Consider the image of artist Edvard Munch’s T
he Scream with the tiny oval mouth that does not open. The ghostly figure is famished, starving with no means of receiving nourishment, satisfaction or fulfillment of any kind.
As a minister for more than twenty-eight years, I have made many a house call visiting recuperating or ill or elderly congregants. Years ago the awareness came to me that in seeing how one lived—what their homes and cars looked like inside and how they interacted with family—told me volumes that perhaps would not have emerged after years of counseling. I have entered homes, from humble dwellings to mansions, packed with massive amounts of “stuff.” I have been invited into rooms that were only narrow pathways in which to traverse the clutter, which included the unopened boxes of toasters, slow cookers, coffeepots and domed hair dryers and on and on.
On a recent visit to New York City to study with the Dalai Lama, I left RCM Hall late one afternoon. Thousands of attendees poured out onto Sixth Avenue, many attempting to hail taxis. Since it was a bright, warm autumn day, I decided to walk over to Fifth Avenue to try my luck at getting a cab there. Well, lo and behold, what was at the corner but Saks Fifth Avenue! Needless to say, I had to go in. I always like to balance my spiritual nirvana with a tiny dose of samsara.
I headed directly to the famous new shoe department I had seen on the TV news. It’s so large it has its own zip code, if you can only imagine. It was a Saturday mob scene. One would have thought Saks was giving away these shoes, instead of charging prices that ranged from expensive to stratospheric.
I sat on a low bench to take a breather and just observe the frenetic scene when a very young woman approached me. She was tall and stately with beautiful legs that she was attempting to emphasize even more with the elegant stilettos she wore. She asked for my help. Should she buy the plain leather pumps for $400 or the gray snakeskin ones for $875? As gently as possible I—who own many pairs of shoes—explained to her that just minutes before I had been with the Dalai Lama at a lecture and couldn’t possibly shift from those teachings and their energy to assist her in choosing between two expensive pairs of shoes. My only advice to this woman of perhaps twenty-two was to ask her to consider how limited would be her opportunities to wear the more expensive of the two pairs of shoes. The black pumps would at least serve her better and longer. She pondered my advice for a moment . . . and then bought the more expensive pair! Ah so.