Practice and Fun Summary: A discussion of a student's practice followed by Lama Shenpen explaining the place of fun in Buddhism.

A student writes: "I have completed the first book of Trusting the Heart of Buddhism and this has not only deepened my understanding, but has had other effects. Mainly, I have come to understand and trust that Truth is indeed coming to me from its own side. As the course suggested, I did reflect and spend some time before meditation considering this fact. During meditation when I came back to the present moment, I also reflected on this fact. I do in fact actually feel this adhistana." Lama Shenpen: Great. Student: "I want to meditate and look forward to meditating. Daily life awareness which, before was more hit or miss has really kicked in. However, along with this has come an anxiety or sense of fear. I feel that I have been at this place before and have shut down." Lama Shenpen: This is quite a common reaction actually. Student: "It is difficult to stay open but I am putting some effort in to it with some success. I am recognizing when and how I shut down. The ego mandala is saying things like 'you don't need this ... you could do this or that and distract yourself and feel better.' But now I see that distracting myself will only give me temporary relief and that the suffering will return." Lama Shenpen: That is right. Student: "So I am choosing the discomfort of the strangeness of opening. I repeat the refuge prayer and the Guru Rinpoche Prayer and I wish that others who are experiencing what I am could have courage and persist. Does this sound right to you?" Lama Shenpen: It sounds spot on. Student: "I wish that there was someone close by that I could talk to about this. It would help to be able to pick up the phone and talk with someone." Lama Shenpen: Why not ring me? Why not ask at the office for a new contact person? Or another Sangha member to link up with? We have various schemes to help people to keep in touch with each other. ( Such as Dharma Buddies – see Sanghaspace. Ed.) Student: "Speaking of talking to someone, you had asked me to call you concerning my questions about thoughts in meditation. I could not reach you when I called, however I am reading and going over your booklet on Formless Meditation. That along with just trusting the teaching seems to be working." Lama Shenpen: Yes, the telephone has been down on and off all summer - since the office moved. So just keep trying! Student: "One last question, where does fun fit in with Buddhism?" Lama Shenpen: It is the essence of Buddhism. Student: "Is it considered a diversion?" Lama Shenpen: No. A sense of fun is considered a virtue. Buddhism is the complete opposite to a depressed and dull mind at every stage of the path - especially at the end. But our problem is that we tend to mistake the objects of pleasure for fun and so miss the moment - having missed it all our so called pleasures turn into grief and the nature of chitta - the endless source of fun for ourselves and all beings gets entangled in attachment and we lose our sense of humour. What a shame! Student: "I have seen many smiling faces on pictures of Tibetan people and also in pictures of the Sangha." Lama Shenpen: For good reason - when you have found the path to Awakening there is no need to ever feel despondent.

Practice and Insight Summary: A student's letter about their practice and experience which Lama Shenpen found very inspiring.

A student writes: "At the moment my practice comprises of: The Awakened Heart Sangha Standard Morning and Evening Liturgy, which I can keep to 80% of the time depending on my shifts. Half an hour to an hour reading and study - related to the course books - which I can keep to around 60% of the time depending on my shifts. (I do a lot of reading at work during quiet periods) A minimum of 45 mins formless meditation a day - which I make sure I do 99% of the time - depending on domestic crises or other such untoward events. (My formless meditation is usually incorporated into the Liturgy practice) And I listen to one of your teachings at night as I nod off, on occasion if it’s too late I will continuously say the refuge prayer in my heart until I nod off - so I manage to do that all of the time. I have a copy of the Samantabhadrapranidhana and I'm going to start incorporating that into my practice soon. I was thinking of reciting it once a week in place of the liturgy or something. My main practice is opening up to my direct experience. There have been unstable periods in the past when everything fed into opening up into my direct experience - would it be true to say the liturgy gets my motivation right - THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF ALL BEINGS - the study, reflection, meditation and talks sharpen the Clarity aspect and enable you to cut through what prevents you from experiencing your Awakened Heart ..? I'm having problems explaining myself here but there's some sort of faculty which just cuts through everything in an instant - not completely, although it did when I was a child - and it does it at any time, i.e. sat at work, in a traffic jam, whatever, there's the background awareness, a sort of gap then WHACK ..!! When I first started Discovering the Heart of Buddhism I thought it was something I did, like it was something I could control, but now I'm not so sure. I have noticed that the course work and your talks really take you there and sharpen up the clarity aspect of awareness which enables you to somehow notice something, rather than make something happen because it’s always completely out of the blue and a shock, so I suppose I can't be doing anything ..!!! I feel meditation is something that then develops from this initial experience as you have discovered something that needs further investigation and meditation is the ideal environment to let it develop - then the shear shock / awesomeness of the flash of insight, or whatever you want to call it, almost demands this. Now to the actual experience itself I can only explain it in terms of ‘after the event’ concepts, but it is shockingly obvious - in the sense that your normal experience, what you thought was everything, is completely and briefly eclipsed by what can only by called infinity. What was everything now becomes puny, and although significant, unfounded from its very root, as if it was all built on empty space, but still somehow existing. Another way of describing it came to mind this morning - like a toy train whizzing around and around on a circular line, continuously going around and around, then suddenly the track is briefly broken and it’s completely open ended ..!!!! The interesting thing about the after effects of the experience is the heart response. I have never really thought of myself as being a compassionate person - I was a problem child when I was little, a little scrapper, and to be honest probably a bully later on then a reckless thrill seeker as a teenager, but when I touch this, the instant almost autonomic response is to give everybody a good shake and wake then up to this inherent reality which we are all missing. It’s very natural and completely from the heart. I realise now that it needs complete attention and although living a householders life is fine, I need to go into long term retreat at some time in my life. That's why it was so nice when you showed me the booklet on Pranidhanas. I have made a strong wish to eventually be able to dedicate myself completely to the Dharma for the Enlightenment of All beings - but still be able to fulfill my family commitments, I know this sounds contradictory, but that's how my heart feels. Lama Shenpen could you please share any thoughts you have on the above. Please be brutally frank if you think I am way off the mark. I do feel a bit nervous and slightly cocky about explaining my experience, as best I can, especially as I am an inexperienced Buddhist practitioner but I am being as truthful as I possibly can in my words." Lama Shenpen: No, none of this is off the mark – it’s all very honest and just how it is - and it’s great that you can keep up this level of practice in the home and work environment. The important thing is not to cling on to good experience or fear so-called 'bad' experience but to just keep going towards that sense of what is absolutely true. It has this wonderful awake sense to it - and everything else pales - you know more and more surely the false for what it is. --- By Lama Shenpen Hookham

Thoughts Like Clouds Summary: Looking at the nature of thoughts and seeing them like clouds in the space of our awareness.

A student writes: "About my meditation - as you advised I am just accepting whatever experience I have in my meditation regarding thoughts and not labeling them either right or wrong. I am just sitting with them This means that if I don’t get caught up with them (which I quite often do) then it becomes like a film show in which they are just happening and I am the observer. Or a better description would be like clouds passing by in the sky, they are like fluffy objects without any substance and therefore no hook to catch me and draw me in on a thought stream." Lama Shenpen: That is a good image. Student: "I would like your opinion on this. Is this a better way of dealing with the thoughts? Am I heading in the right direction?" Lama Shenpen: Yes, you are heading in the right direction. It’s the way to deal with thoughts in mediation while you are learning to recognise the nature of thoughts. Obviously at other times we need to think - it is natural to think and it is our thinking that gives us the power to follow the path to Awakening. But we need to notice that we have the choice about what thoughts to follow and which one's to let go - so meditation shows us just what our options are. The more we let them be like fluffy clouds in the space of our awareness, the less we feel driven by them and the more choice we have - in other words the freer we are - and interestingly, when we are feeling open and free like this, our responses are more skilful and appropriate and we do not have to think so much in order to do things. It is like that for learning any skill isn’t it. You learn how to relax and respond rather than try to think out every move in detail. So yes - good. You are moving along in the right direction.

Developing a Deeper Understanding of Self Summary: Learning to recognise what is false or conditioned confidence and then trying to rely on something deeper that could withstand the loss of all those conditions. Exploring the experience of self.

A student writes: "I personally find that I am attached to the things which, if I didn’t know better, I would use to define ‘me’ For example my job, the relationship with my children, even the jobs around my house. I find that these are too strong and don’t reflect what I know to be true. Can you suggest a meditation which might help me to let go of that strong hold of external identity." Lama Shenpen: The confidence section of the Course (Discovering the Heart of Buddhism) is all about this kind of thing - learning to recognise what is false or conditioned confidence and then trying to rely on something deeper that could withstand the loss of all those conditions. You could try experimenting in your mind thinking, “If I lost my job who would I be? If I lost my wife who would I be?” Or my children or my country or whatever. Each time try to link into where your true strength and resourcefulness lies and remember that in your meditation sessions - that is what you are linking into by practising meditation. Student: "Secondly, I have been reading a book about Zen Buddhism (Zen – A Way of Life by Christmas Humphreys) In it he states that, “All the components of the personality, the five Skandas of body… are found to contain no self which we can call our own, still less a self which is immortal and permanent. The thing we call ‘I’ is an illusion. (Nothing for that matter is immortal)” So my question is, if we take nothing of what we think is us, with us, then what does the Karma which affects us over lifetimes attach to?" Lama Shenpen: Well this section of the book needs unpicking a bit because it applies in a certain context only. When he says they are found to contain no self it’s almost as if he is saying we come to an intellectual conclusion that we have no self and that this is the right conclusion. Actually a conceptual idea of no self is useless. It would make you into a mad person if you just believed that as an intellectual idea. It is actually something alive that you find about your experience - you find it’s alive but you cannot find a 'self' that is owning it - which is surprising – it’s a surprising experience because we act as if we knew who we were the whole time and then we find we don’t and that is shocking really. It’s an experience we are talking about here - not a doctrine or an idea we are supposed to believe in. Having had this experience to some extent the question does indeed arise as to how karma can carry from life to life. It also raises the question of identity at all - in what sense are you talking to the same person today as you were yesterday? The problem is right there in our experience - if we are to have any experience at all (and we cannot avoid it) then it contradicts the idea of no self. Yet we cannot find a self. So what are we experiencing really? We each have to look directly into our own experience and find the answer for ourselves. If meaning can pass from moment to moment in our speech, actions and thoughts, why should it not be able to pass from life to life - it is no more and no less mysterious. But try to explain that – it’s very difficult - that is because it’s very deep. It’s very subtle and hard to understand because we carry so many coarse concepts around with us that filter out the truth. It’s hard to spot the simple truth because we are so complicated. Meditation is about dropping all those complications. I don’t know if this weasely answer helps at all! --- By Lama Shenpen Hookham Firm Resolve and Flexibility Summary: How it is important to keep resolves that we make. If it is no longer workable, don't be sloppy, be clear and make a new resolve. A student writes: "From Discovering the Heart of Buddhism Book 4 the following question arose: What is the difference between being firm and being fixed? I often find myself feeling I need to be firmer with resolves and intentions of body, speech and mind but then I fear they will become a 'view' and I will overshoot into becoming fixed and solidifying them at the expense of responding spontaneously and appropriately - grasping after the preservation of a resolve or intention when it could be inappropriate to do so. Then I begin to feel I need to let go and relax more and I tend to swing back to becoming vague and wishy washy and sleepy. Then I feel I need to be firmer in body, speech and mind and the cycle starts again! Is it best just to link to the heart energy and keep a few clear and simple questions in mind when this dilemma comes up such as 'is this thought/feeling/conversation/action etc helping me and others to wake up and reduce suffering or is it doing the opposite?" Lama Shenpen: I think your suggestion about asking yourself that question is the way to go. It is important to be able to keep firmly on course and to be able to make resolves knowing you have the power to carry them through. Sometimes, as you say this seems to conflict with openness and going along with change. However, if you have made a resolve it is very important to make a big deal out of it when the situation suggests that it’s no longer appropriate to follow that resolve through. I think that is the point here. Stick to your resolve through thick and thin and that really shows that that is what gives you the power to be effective both for your own good and for the good of others. When you find yourself in a situation where you can see that keeping the resolve is going to result in more harm than good then don’t just be sloppy - turn towards that conflict and be very clear about it. Make a new resolve. Make a resolve that incorporates the whole new situation into itself. For example, if you have made a resolve to stay in retreat and not go out at all, but then someone in the family is in distress and it really is up to you and there is something you can do that nobody else can - and you can see that what you should have done when you made your resolve was to say 'I will not leave unless there is an emergency in the family'. So you then make a deliberate change in your resolve to include this new proviso. And then be determined to keep it. You can do as you suggest above - you can add the proviso to all your resolves that you will do such and such unless in your judgement it is more harmful to yourself to do it than to not do it. If you do not make these adjustments to your resolves in a clear strong way, when there is pressure on the boundaries - when there are temptations - there is the emotion of, 'Oh dear we are getting near the boundary!' and that is uncomfortable. If you do not turn towards it and make a clear decision you get pushed nearer and nearer the edge and then you find you have gone over the edge and there is no way it can be justified within the terms of the original resolve - and that is when you realise you have lost your power of resolve. You don’t believe in your resolve any more and neither do other people. It becomes impossible to keep to it any more and it’s very hard to set up a new resolve with conviction. So it’s a very important point that you are raising here. On the other hand - you may be asking yourself, how do I know how beneficial it is to do one thing rather than another? The only answer is to keep turning towards situations and keeping as close to what is actually happening as possible. The more you are in touch with what is actually happening with both yourself and the situation as a whole the more naturally and appropriately you will respond - you will get a feel for how the situation is opening up and which way to go, how much to give and where you need to be firm. Keeping in touch with the situation like this is quite different from thinking it all out all the time and trying to make decisions in advance - if you do this then you are always trying to work things out in the head and losing touch with the actual situation. Often we take in too little information and work it over in our head and respond too late and quite blindly. We end up reacting and taking our assumptions and projections to be the real world instead of staying in touch and noticing, 'Oh I didn’t understand that. Oh I might not have got the whole story yet. Where is that taking us? What is really happening here?’ The more you ask that kind of question the more in touch you are and so the more likely you are to respond appropriately rather than reacting. So the resolves give you a general direction and structure to how you live while turning towards situations and keeping in touch with what is going on in yourself and in the situation allows you to work through the resolve in practice - clearly adapting the resolve to fit the developing situation as you go. Does this help? --- By Lama Shenpen Hookham Course info Make donation Tantric Sex and Eternal Relationships Summary: How advanced practitioners use Tantric sexual union as a form of practise - resting in the moment with no attachment. How we can make pranidhanas to meet again and again in future lives to build strong mandalas. A student writes: "I do not know much about the sexual yoga practices of Tantric Buddhism and do not really wish to. I've not noticed any emphasis on this within the AHS. From what I've read, they seem to me a bit of a digression from the main teachings of Buddhism." Lama Shenpen: No, they are not a digression at all. They are very important. In the after death state, it is sexual attraction that pulls us back into rebirth in samsara, if we could meditate well while engaged in sexual union then we could open out into the bliss essence of reality and rest in that without attachment - it would be a fantastic way to practice meditation and realise Enlightenment. Generally speaking though, people cannot even meditate properly in the midst of enjoying the bliss of eating a delicious meal let alone sexual union. The grasping mind is always running on wanting more, wanting what hasn’t come yet, wanting to hold on to what it has, feeling regret for what has just gone, comparing this experience favourably or unfavourably with another or simply thinking about something else altogether. It's not easy. The way to prepare to be able to practise during orgasm in the midst of sexual union with another is to practice awareness in all situations of enjoyment. When we are good at that then it would be time to move into more advanced practice while in sexual union. It is very hard when having an orgasm to just rest into the experience without feeling 'oh no!' and somehow closing off. Somehow that would seem too much - too much intensity - a moment or so of that is about what most people can stand before closing off. Then the tendency is to get obsessed with those few moments and to keep wanting to repeat them but it’s hard to do that with complete freshness of awareness - so it becomes boring. So there is then a tendency to look around for more excitement and more stimulation so that one can trick oneself into waking up more simply through having introduced an element of novelty into the whole thing. This obsession with wanting to repeat or prolong an experience easily becomes very self-seeking and selfish, leading to misery and more intense samsara than ever, so it’s not a practice worth emphasising too much for most people most of the time. People find out all about this suffering for themselves. I don’t need to say much - they practise sex anyway - they don’t need me to tell them to do it. So I just talk a lot about keeping as awake and as aware as one can in all experiences good and bad - so that covers the essence of the practice of sexual yoga. I encourage everyone to practise like that when having sex or a sexual orgasm. There are special yogic practices one can learn and employ but the essential point there, from the Buddhist point of view, is firstly having the kind of understanding and commitment to practice as above and secondly the adhistana coming from the lineage. Without that it too easily just becomes egoistic pleasure seeking that leads to simply more samsara and not appropriate for most people. Student: "You mentioned about you and Rigdzin Shikpo being married for the rest of your lives and (assuming one accepts the idea of future lives) this gives much food for thought. I wonder whether this applies to the rest of us too - whether it applies to all our relationships with our family members, relatives and in-laws ... ?" Lama Shenpen: It could do. In the life of the Buddha and in the lives of his great disciples there is a lot of talk about how various people were his parents, his wife, his friends and disciples in past lives and it was because of their pranidhanas in past lives that his chief disciples became his chief disciples and so on. So yes, it applies across the board - we probably have met this lifetime because of past pranidhanas and we will meet again in future lifetimes because of our pranidhanas in this life - that is why we keep dedicating punya in order to bring all beings to awakening. That is the ultimate pranidhana for all our connections that we ever had, have now or ever will have to benefit others not just for one lifetime, but for all their lifetimes until they reach the end of suffering. So yes - Rinpoche marrying us for all our lifetimes was a specific pranidhana made in the context of the universal pranidhana for all beings - and it was made as a skilful means for forming strong and effective mandalas for bringing Dharma into the world. It’s all good stuff. --- By Lama Shenpen Hookham Spiritual Ambition and Heart Wish Summary: Discussing the difference between ego-driven spiritual ambition and the urgency to practice felt as a manifestation of the heart wish. A student writes: "Something that has been quite strong over the period since my brother died, as it has on previous occasions, is my desire to obtain spiritual growth." Lama Shenpen: That is good - but maybe from the Buddhist point of view spiritual growth gives the wrong impression, as if it means you have to do something to yourself to make more of yourself. Of course you could say this was necessary in the sense that one needs to take oneself in hand and move along the path, but it’s not true in the sense that we fundamentally need to be something that we are not already. We’re just not properly aware of it and so we’re not expressing it fully and properly. Student: "I feel there is a strong ego component to this, wanting to achieve." Lama Shenpen: Yes, that is what happens if you get the wrong end of the stick. Student: "When I get energy movements and other strong physical indicators during my meditation I get drawn into wanting to push harder, feeling that I am on the verge of some breakthrough." Lama Shenpen: There is never any need to get excited about things like that. Sometimes things do shift around in the body and mind but that doesn’t mean you have to do anything in particular – it’s more a matter of letting things happen naturally. If you try to do anything it interferes with the process. Student: "Of course this breakthrough doesn't happen, which can lead to a degree of frustration, and this can result in physical tension and some anxiety." Lama Shenpen: Yes - I wonder if your idea of some kind of a breakthrough comes from reading books. Trying to make something happen or even just anticipating something very strongly creates tension and is in itself an expression of anxiety - hopes and fears, “Am I going to get it? Am I doing this right? Am I going to fail? Am I going to prove to myself I am no use? It’s no use.” etc etc. None of this is necessary. Instead you could think of your practice as a step on the path - each session, each experience is a step on the path. It’s not a matter of looking for any particular result except a general sense of going in the right direction. Nothing spectacular has to happen even though for some people spectacular or exciting experiences happen from time to time. A lot depends on one's constitution. If you don’t have certain problems there is nothing exciting about them falling away - everyone is so different. Student: "Having said that there is an ego component to it, there is I believe also a genuine urge or need regarding my spiritual growth." Lama Shenpen: I believe you and your question proves that it is this deeper urge that is really motivating you. Student: "At times this need can be emotionally painful, there is an urgency to it which I feel is beyond the ego. I have felt this urgency regarding my practice ever since coming to the Dharma more than 14 years ago." Lama Shenpen: That is good, we all need this sense of urgency. We are in samsara and samsara is a dangerous place to be! Student: "How do I approach my practice without this urgency or maybe willfulness, which I believe adversely effects my practice?" Lama Shenpen: You have put that rather well - you need to learn to distinguish between the sense of urgency and the willfulness and go with the one and let go of the other. The path of Awakening is a subtle matter so you are not going to get it right straight off - we all have to struggle with this problem right up to the moment of enlightenment. We are always just that bit too slack and just that bit too ego-centric in our efforts - until we get it spot on - dead on track - then that is enlightenment! Student: "I don't want to lose this drive I have regarding my Dharma practice, but I also don't want this urgency and drive to swamp my practice." Lama Shenpen: Right, so the question is how to distinguish between the two. This is where the heart-wish is so important. You need to really link into what is meant by the deepest heart-wish, that wish that is there in our beings always. When we honour that wish we don’t go wrong. I hope this helps --- By Lama Shenpen Hookham Synchronicity and Decisions Summary: Looking at synchronicity, making skillful pranidhanas and being relaxed about making choices. A student writes: "I really hope I can meet you in person soon. I have two young children who make it difficult for me to get away but I am sure it will happen. I have been meditating every day now and find I have become so much calmer and clearer in my thinking. I try to meditate morning and night time for about 30 minutes. Things in my experience appear to be changing, and I have been having synchronistic things happen. What is the significance of these events, is it good to follow the directions it seems to point? Or should I be careful? I am particularly needing to know what work direction to go in? Several things particularly interest me to study but finances are so difficult. I need to be very practical at the moment." Lama Shenpen: Thank you for your email. It is good to be in touch with you. When we really commit ourselves to the path of Awakening that sense of synchronicity tends to increase because somehow the inner and outer spheres of experience become increasingly integrated. It is very strange and happens intuitively - we start to intuit what is meaningful and is going to open out into a significant direction. The reason for this is very deep and so not easy to explain. Nonetheless I think we are all familiar with this truth to some extent. So often one hears people saying 'it is obviously meant' and yet such an observation does not fit with their general world-view about the nature of the Universe! The most important thing from our side is to learn to make skilful pranidhanas. We need to link into our deepest heart wish and then to formulate our wishes that are in accord with this and make prayers such as 'May whatever path I choose to follow bring benefit to myself and others' or 'May I turn whatever work I choose to do into the path to Awakening'. It is good to relax and not be too attached to hopes and fears and worries about whether the choice I am making is the right choice or not. Instead make sure it’s a good choice made for good reasons and with good motivation and then relax and trust the path to open up before you. It does this best if we are not obsessively attached to hopes and fears about the outcome of our actions. If the motive is good then the action is good and the result will be good. Gendun Rinpche used to say this all the time and tell us not to get caught up in too much thinking. ‘Make up your mind and do it. Don’t think so much!' I didn’t find it easy advice to follow - in the sense that when the choices are not clear it is not easy to just make up one's mind. Nonetheless his advice did help me not to take the whole thing so seriously - emotionally it helped to know that there was no virtue in obsessively worrying about whether I was making the right choice or not - it was just a habit of mind and not a necessary part of the decision making process. The actual decision making process consists of gathering the options, evaluating them and then choosing one option and going with it. This can be done in gentle and relaxed stages since somehow the sifting through the options and coming to a sense of what is the one we are going to go with seems to happen without our really having to do much really. It just seems to happen – it’s the way our awareness operates naturally. So we can relax and just have confidence in the naturalness of the whole process. Does this help? --- By Lama Shenpen Hookham Ego Mandala Summary: A description of how the ego mandala operates and how we can respond more effectively if can simply open to experiences and situations. A student writes: "How do we reconcile our heart nature to our less than perfect life experience? I mean, even after feeling this heart in me, I still got really uptight with my teenage son the other day. I tried to remember that heart feeling and yes it made me reflect on my reactions, but in a posterior sense. I know I can't expect this to be like a magic wand that wipes away past habits that took years and lifetimes to form, but in those situations I have that nagging, inept feeling of not doing things right, not being good enough." Lama Shenpen: At moments like that there are two things going on - two messages from two different worlds. On the one hand there is the message of wisdom and compassion that is responding to what the child is doing wrong - maybe it requires some forceful action to deal with it - and then there is the ego-mandala trying to protect itself, “Oh, I don’t like it when he does that, don’t like having to tell him off, I don’t like this and that and I don’t like feeling I am a horrible person!” I I I full of wanting this and not wanting that. That is a secondary thing and you can drop all that - but you still have to deal with the situation - and maybe it just doesn’t feel good telling someone off and if you were to turn towards the feeling of not wanting to do it and doing it anyway - you might find you do it differently and more effectively. But even if you don’t, you at least did your best and life is all about learning - we don’t get it right every time do we? That is ok - that is how we learn. Student: "At first I think I didn't understand this idea of the ego-mandala trying to protect itself. I don't know if this is what you meant but I have realized that I do tend to spend a lot of time wanting and not wanting things, liking and not liking things. Maybe that is where judgmental tendencies, the tendency to label things as good or bad, positive or negative, are coming from. It is sort of similar to me being in an orchestra and thinking that the only way beautiful music will ever be made is if I am the conductor and decide about the when, where and how of things. I have seen myself doing that with the people around me, seeing their words and actions through the distortions of my own wants and likes,etc. I hadn't realised I had been doing that before and now I can begin to see how things can get so misunderstood, and the emotions that arise from that. When I have tried to turn towards those feelings, it has been like getting a glimpse of insight into the situation. 'Ah, so that's what's going on.' Normally, though it is still an after-sight. Is that what you meant about the ego mandala?" Lama Shenpen: Yes it is - the 'I' that separates off from the experience and tries to control it or make it this way or that way, or at the very least categorizes it and tries to pigeon hole it as fixed as good or bad or this or that. The whole thing comes from not wanting to just open to situations and experiences as just being expressions of openness, clarity and sensitivity. We want them to be more than that - something graspable that can make us feel secure as if we knew what we were and what the experience was and it’s all sewn up and sure. That is what the ego mandala is trying to do all the time - to pin things down and secure its ground so it doesn’t have to face the openness that threatens its whole existence. It doesn’t want that much clarity and sensitivity - it would rather have something that it could control and establish its own existence in relation to. That is what all the liking and disliking and heavy judgementalism is about – it’s all about securing 'me'! When you notice you don’t have to do that - that you can relax and just let the experience come to you just as it is and respond to it naturally - then the ego mandala collapses. A whole different response to the situation becomes possible. So basically yes - you are right. --- By Lama Shenpen Hookham Evasion Summary: How we resist looking at the nature of our mind and prefer to stay in our familiar cosy world. How it is important to turn towards it now - it is the route to freedom, relaxation and fearlessness. A student writes: "I have recently finished the section on confidence in Course book 2 of Discovering the Heart of Buddhism. It has seemed very true and intuitively right to me. However, I seem to find quite a few problems in this area. You write in the course book that 'confidence is the absence of fear.' Faced with a period of silence on retreat I can become a bit depressed, a little scared of the silence, as if I have no reference points. There's a sense of falling, of not being grounded at all. In this instance the only advantage was in seeing the world rather in the illusory, dreamlike way described in Buddhist texts. I certainly didn't feel I was taking reality for granted. I was aware of impermanence and change, and of the fragility of life. My reaction in these situations is always to want to run away, find people to talk to or a book to read." Lama Shenpen: That is a typical reaction, it is what we are all doing all the time - looking for distraction. Student: "I have managed to keep sitting, although at first I didn't want to. There is some resistance there to looking at nature of mind type questions, however, and a lot of the time I struggle to get concentrated enough." Lama Shenpen: There is a good reason for us resisting looking at the nature of the mind and the questions that throw it into relief. To recognise that nature carries with it a demand - we know in our guts that a response and a commitment are needed and yet the mandala of our cosy world that is so familiar to us tells us 'Don’t go there!' That creates a tension and we avoid that tension by not going there - we look for distraction - and then suddenly it’s too late. We are dying and we are still trapped in samsara. That is when we realise that we actually had no real choice - the cosy world that was so familiar was an illusion and now we are out in the cold where we didn’t want to go voluntarily. Oh how we shall regret it at that time because it would have been so much easier to actually turn towards it now. It is the route to freedom - to liberation, to relaxation and fearlessness - take it - take it now! Looking at Time Summary: How we can change the world itself by changing our perceptions. When we lose grasp of our concept of time we can see through to what really is. A student writes: "Lama Shenpen, in Buddhism Connect, “Concepts and Time” you say: ‘So that, for example, something that was badly configured could be shifted so that it was an auspicious configuration, not just psychologically but also in the world we encounter around us, and in that sense the 'past' can be changed.’ Do you mean that we can change badly configured parts of our own ‘past’ in our current life by shifting our perception when we reflect back on it? For example, perhaps we caused ourselves suffering before we knew how to act more skillfully by taking someone’s actions towards us and allowing ourselves to create a thought world around that. Then when we start the practice and look back from this new perspective, becoming aware of what we did, does it makes that experience more auspicious because we see it more clearly for the delusion that it was / is?" Lama Shenpen: Something like that but it is all a bit more amazing than that since there is no other world and there never was - so we are actually changing the world itself - not just our thoughts about it. Student: "Or, now I’ve written that, I think maybe we can forget all the back and forward movement through time and just re-look at the experience more skillfully and see it for what it was anyway. I’m starting to lose a grasp of the concept of time here. I can’t see that it matters ‘when’ an experience happened, what seems to matter to me is that we can learn from the mistakes we made in all our experiences and use that to help deepen our practice." Lama Shenpen: You are right about that. We have to lose grasp of our concept of time and see through it to what it really is, before we grasped, and then we might understand what Rigdzin Shikpo meant. In the meantime, as you say – it’s a matter of learning from our mistakes and telling ourselves our own story of liberation. Whatever we did in the 'past' was a step in the on-going story of our path to liberation. --- By Lama Shenpen Hookham Auspicious and Mysterious Connections Summary: How auspicious, mysterious connections beyond thought - that go from life to life - create worlds especially Pure Lands. A student writes: "I’ve never understood what auspiciousness really means. Configurations of connections?! But connections to or with what? I think of connections as being with others (whatever ‘others’ means), or the adhistana of beings. But you seem to be saying something much more about the whole structure of reality and how my actions can make or break that???" Lama Shenpen: Yes - it relates to group karma I think - and magic. Student: "Not just my own bit of karma. This is rather mind-boggling stuff. I don’t really even know how to ask questions about it, or where to start. Are you taking about these auspicious connections creating pure lands or creating all worlds?" Lama Shenpen: All worlds I think - but especially Pure Lands. Student: "And why are some numbers, like 108, considered ‘auspicious’?" Lama Shenpen: I pass on that one. I never got a sensible answer out of anyone I ever asked. Rigdzin Shikpo has some theory but I always forget it! Student: "What are they connecting us to?" Lama Shenpen: Mysterious connections beyond thought. Student: "My mind boggles at the mysteriousness of these auspicious connections….and what that really means." Lama Shenpen: Yes - I am not surprised – it’s the kind of thing only Buddhas really know. We just have a general sense and maybe some intuitions about them. They are our real connections, not the ones we analyse away with Madhyamaka reasoning. If you look at the way things connect in a gross way you find there is no connection between things and no things that could be connected. So here we are talking about mysterious 'connections' that go from life to life. --- By Lama Shenpen Hookham