December 2008

Lama Norlha Rinpoche often reminds us that the best advice he got from his first root lama in Tibet was, “Always remember impermanence.”

Rinpoche likes to point out that most of us don’t plan for the end of our life. We only get as far as saving up for the nursing home—and many of us don’t even make it there. We never give a thought to what will happen after we die, or we don’t really believe in it, until we get there.

Buddhists consider the moment of death to be our greatest opportunity to fully recognize the true, unchanging nature of our mind, jump off the merry-go-round, and help others do the same. But without advance preparation, when that moment comes we won’t have a clue, and we don’t know where our karma will take us next time around. “If you don’t practice now,” Rinpoche once asked, “when will you do it? When you’re a cow grazing in a field?” That’s why we constantly remind ourselves, through the second of the Four Thoughts, that death could come, or our situation could suddenly change, at any moment.

A few years ago, when I lived in rural New Hampshire, I was taking a walk on the most gloriously perfect early fall day you can imagine, just feeling on top of the world, la la la la la, when I passed a neighbor’s pig pen. Mr. and Mrs. Pig were friends of mine, and I always stopped to say a few mani’s if they were out and about. But today Mrs. Pig was standing there all alone looking very, very upset. Where is Mr. Pig? As I passed the driveway, why, there was Mr. Pig—laid out on the asphalt, freshly slaughtered and about to be hung up for bacon. Mrs. Pig was next on the list.

A Western teacher I studied Tibetan with back in the 1980s used to say, “We already fell off the building. We’re hurtling toward the ground.”

Whatever helps us remember impermanence and appreciate the amazing opportunity this lifetime affords—no matter what temporary problems we may be facing at any given moment—the best way to take advantage of it is summed up in the Buddha’s most concise exposition of the path:

Refrain from negative actions,
Engage in positive actions,
And tame your own mind.
That is the Buddha’s teaching.

With regard to our actions, he advised us to avoid harm to others and, if at all possible, help them, particularly by refraining from and doing the opposite of killing, stealing, sexual misconduct; untruthful, harsh, divisive or meaningless speech; coveting what others have, and wishing others harm. These 10 negative and positive actions are further explained in numerous excellent resources, such as The Torch of Certainty by Jamgon Kongtrul and The Words of My Perfect Teacher by Patrul Rinpoche.

Taming the mind is done through meditation. The Tibetan Buddhist path includes many different types of meditation designed to uncover our innate wisdom through various routes. In three-year retreat, we’ve begun to get a glimpse of some of the more esoteric practices that are said to make enlightenment possible in a single lifetime. But the starting point of the path is simple calm abiding meditation, and this method alone, if practiced diligently, will vastly improve one’s day-to-day quality of life, lead automatically to deeper realization, and come in very handy at the time of death or in any kind of adversity.

In the early days of the personal computer, circa 1980, when there was only one font, no graphics, no color, and no mouse, and everybody played Pac-Man, a really sophisticated computer game came out. It was based on the 1970s TV show The Prisoner, about a renegade British secret agent mysteriously exiled to “the Village,” a maddeningly cheerful island that bore no resemblance to reality. In the computer game, the player typed in words, and maybe used the cursor keys to move around, in order to solve a series of more and more complex and seemingly illogical puzzles and eventually “escape”—something Number Six, the hero of The Prisoner, never managed to do.

I remember clearly the day we solved the final puzzle. The solution was: “Unplug the computer.” So simple…yet we never thought of it on our own!

You might need your computer, but what if you just turned it off and meditated for a half hour, or even 15 minutes? Or, don’t turn it off—just walk away and meditate for ten minutes, or five, and come right back.

Or, stay at the computer and just swivel your chair around and let thoughts go for a few minutes. Or, don’t even turn around—just lower your gaze and focus on your breath. Don’t try to change it, just notice it, while gently letting go of any thoughts that arise. You can even look like you’re working!

If you don’t have five minutes, and I’ve been in that situation many times myself, maybe you could follow Thich Nhat Hanh’s advice and take three slow, mindful breaths, relaxing and letting all thoughts go just for that short amount of time.

If you don’t even have time for three breaths, then Mingyur Rinpoche has a suggestion: just rest your mind for ONE SECOND! He says we can do this any time, anywhere. Once when he was teaching meditation in New York City he stopped and talked to himself for a moment to see if it’s possible to meditate while conversing. He reported to his highly amused audience that yes,  it is! In the one-second technique, you just focus for that second on whatever you’re doing; let all thoughts and feelings go, and be present where you are, vividly—feeling tactile sensations, hearing sounds, noticing your breath, or relaxing into the vastness of space.

Many years ago during a teaching at KTC, someone asked Kalu Rinpoche how often we should meditate. Without hesitating, Rinpoche replied, “Whenever you realize you’re not meditating, then you should meditate.”

Listen! The banshee is already wailing on the mountainside! There’s no other time than now.