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| Tushita - McCleod Gang, India |
May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the causes of happiness;
May they be free from suffering and the causes of suffering;
May they never be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering;
And may they dwell in the great equanimity that is free from attachment and aversion.
Kelly and I have been paroled. We completed our 10-day Introduction to Buddhism course at Tushita in McLeod Ganj. Make no mistake, 10 days of nothing but meditation and lessons in Buddhism is a very long time. That being said, it was a fantastic, life-altering experience.
After checking in and getting settled, I quickly discovered a few huge problems. First, there were no napkins in the dining hall. As some may know, I have a passionate napkin fetish. There must be one, and preferably two, napkins on my lap during every meal. As well as providing needed finger wiping and lap protection, napkins instill in me a sense of security while eating that definitely crosses into obsessive-compulsive territory. Second, my two standard-issue blankets were wholly insufficient to protect me from the nightly cold. Tushita resides at 7000 feet, and this time of year is very chilly. Its atmosphere contains not the typical dry, crisp mountain air I am used to, but rather a wet, piercing cold - the kind that easily seeps through walls, blankets, and clothes. Having given all our pre-purchased wool pashminas to Kelly (protocol at Tushita required that Kelly and I sleep in separate dorms), I hardly slept the first night, as I tried to warm the many frozen parts of my body. Most everybody else had sleeping bags. In order to keep pace, on day two I emptied the Tushita store of wool pashminas, and slept toastily from then on. As for the napkins...well...life is suffering.
Our days consisted of morning and afternoon Tibetan Buddhist teachings, sandwiched between meditation sessions (the complete schedule shows the details). The morning teachings were led by Jimi, an ex-monk who has been involved with Buddhism for 30 years. My first impression of Jimi was that of a rambling, hippie Donald Rumsfeld. His teaching style was stream of consciousness; he would start talking, and continue branching from topic to story to topic as each reminded him of something else. At first I was put off by his apparently cluttered mind, but as his teachings continued, I relaxed and gave up trying to learn from him in an organized manner. After letting go (and after he warmed up over a few days), I quite enjoyed his anecdotal style and sense of humor. “Hey, is that Buddhism, man? Well, turn it up!” Jimi was our western teacher.
Our afternoon teachings were led by a Tibetan Lama, whose name I can’t remember. Lamas are head honcho monks. The Lama’s teaching style was totally different from Jimi’s. His points were painstakingly logical and organized, providing a nice contrast. He would sometimes try to make a point so desperately that he would restate it in essentially the same way many times. Lama was very charismatic, issuing questions and hypotheses with great enthusiasm and commitment. He was almost convincing when he insisted “It is true!” after telling stories of the Dalai Lama’s birthplace being revealed to a master through a vision in a parted lake, and of men transferring their consciousness into sheep. Lama was our eastern teacher.
An Australian nun (I forget her name) led our morning meditation sessions, which were "single pointed". Single pointed (also called mindfulness) meditation is an attempt to quiet your mind and focus on only one thing. For us that thing was our breath at a single point, our choice of either our abdomen or the tip of our nose. On day seven, I had an amazing morning mindfulness meditation. It was the deepest meditative state I achieved in the course. The meditation process involves recognizing and labeling your thoughts as they come up, then letting them go and returning to your focus of concentration. Once I left the gompa (prayer center) in my relaxed state, my mind flooded with labels for everything I saw and felt: "bush", "sidewalk", "fresh air"…it was quite surreal. More importantly, I was in a state of bliss, completely free from any thoughts other than those at the current moment. The bliss was striking, actually; if you had told me I had been drugged, I would have easily believed it. Then again, I can also achieve a state of bliss from a strong cappuccino. I reported my experience to our discussion group leader (a new monk from Chile) and was reminded not to get attached to my good experience, but just to notice all the good and bad experiences impartially. I like these Buddhists.
Pam, an American nun, led our evening and nighttime meditations, which were "analytic". Analytic meditation involved Pam issuing soft questions and scenarios on a given topic, such as death or attachment. While she spoke, we would internalize the concepts she was presenting, and draw conclusions for ourselves. We did many of these meditations, and my experiences with them ranged from soul searching to horrible boredom.
In the middle of the day, our class of about 40 students would head to afternoon yoga. This brought a needed physical break from all the stationary mental exercise (although yoga itself involves meditation and breathing). Our yoga instructor (a native San Franciscan) was very good. He cracked me up, though, because at the top of every class he would explain that today we would focus on breath, or today we were really going to work on the physical postures, yet the routine was the same every day. At one point, he gave us a choice of what we wanted to work on the next day. The class told him what we wanted, and he acknowledged what we had chosen at the beginning of the next day’s class, but then led an identical routine again (I’m talking pose for pose). Thankfully, it was a good routine.
Animals are an integral part of Tushita. Though a few cows surrounded the area, the dogs and monkeys ruled the roost. One bitch lives at Tushita, and she was in heat for almost our whole retreat. The two male dogs at Tushita, as well as several from the surrounding area, assaulted her constantly. Actually, assaulted is the wrong word, since she seemed more than willing. The male dogs growled and fought with each other constantly, trying to ensure as many pups as possible would bear their fur color. The monkeys were no strangers to humping themselves. Tushita was crawling with them. Some were aggressive, like the one that charged Kelly for her chocolate bar. But many were docile, and would let us get very close for observation and photos. While we were meditating in the gompa, entire monkey families would traipse along the roof, sending loud clanking sounds which seemed deliberately intended to ruin our concentration. My favorites were the babies that dive bombed their way through the tops of trees – almost every branch supports their weight, so they haphazardly flop all over the place. We found out that after we checked out, the monkeys went rifling through the rooms, sniffing everything for food content.
We were instructed to keep silence at all times during the 10 days except during our discussion groups (one hour per day), and when asking questions during class time. The class mostly adhered to this. Keeping silent was very strange at times, especially during meals and in my dorm of four people. Not until I got into bed the first night did I realize we had no way of checking with each other to make sure everyone was cool with turning the light out. If you think I eat quickly during normal meals, you should see me fly through a meal when there is no conversation and the food is a three-times-a-day let down. About halfway through the class, people started to slack off a bit and have whispering conversations with each other in remote corners of the compound. I can’t blame the talkers…the Tushita staff practically begged us to cheat with teacher comments like, “Everyone is saying what a quiet group this is!” Some students later claimed to be disturbed by the whispering, but to my ears it was remarkably quiet and peaceful. After our last meditation session on day 10, we asked if we could now begin talking. Our instructor didn't explicitly tell us yes or no, but was reluctant to give the green light just yet. We all proceeded to the dining hall, and could not keep quiet any longer. Midway through our chatty meal, an earthquake struck. It was fairly small, but all of our meditations on the acceptance of death went out the window as everyone desperately scrambled for the exits. After the short quake stopped, our instructor yelled out with a grin, "That's what you get for talking!"
After three days I realized, quite painfully, that Tushita is constructed to provide no fun, pleasure, excitement, or stimulation of any kind. It ensures one has nothing to look forward to at any time. Normally during a rigorous 10-day class I would look forward to meals and breaks. But at Tushita the food was prepared to ensure the mouth did not water, and due to the silence vow the breaks were merely another chance to delve deeper into the mind. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not nearly as rigorous as the Vipassana Center next door, whose 10 day course consists of nothing but dead silent meditation from 4am to 10pm every day. Still, by day three I was in a "get me out of here" mindset, as my brain struggled with nothing to look forward to. By day four I started to get some waves of contentment, but on day five, time stopped. I mean that literally; my watch ran out of batteries. But I also mean it figuratively; the day took forever as I dragged along in agony. This was largely due to the cumulative effect of the food.
Yes, I must speak of the food. I let out a mental "uh oh" at the first night’s dinner, which was soup and bread. There was a point at which I was hopeful that after the huge trough of soup was gone, they would bring out the next course. Sadly, once the soup was gone, dinner was over. The kitchen prepared only vegetarian meals, which by itself isn’t a problem. The problem for me was the meals were ludicrously healthy – by far the healthiest food I have ever eaten. But while it was healthy, I’m not sure how good for the body it was. Every dish was carefully prepared so as to contain absolutely no fat, sugar, or protein. Fat and sugar were simply nonexistent, and the only protein came from beans, which cause their own problems if eaten in large quantities. Drinks at mealtimes were a choice between water and tea. I slowly developed an omnipresent gnawing hunger. After the first few meals, I would be "full" for about two hours, then be hungry again. Soon after that, I would arrive to meals hungry, yet sick to my stomach in anticipation of the meal I was about to eat. It’s hard to imagine being hungry yet not wanting to eat, but that feeling had taken over after a few days. It wasn’t that the food was bad; rather, it was mildly tasty health food. It was just that my body knew it was going to get none of what it is used to living on (no meat, cheese, sugar, etc.), and after a while my stomach clued in that soup is almost all water. All this hunger culminated in my becoming weak, dizzy, and extremely agitated by day five. I began to empathize with what Survivor contestants go through on the island. I finally broke on day five and walked down to town (which turned out to be closer than I thought) for a real meal. One chicken tikka (protein), french fries (fat), and Fanta (sugar) later, all symptoms vanished immediately. That night I lay prone, smiling almost unconsciously as if injected full of heroin. From that day forward, I shot up once a day with a meal from town.
The last two days of the class were structured as an all-meditation retreat. Our lectures stopped and in their place we meditated, which amounted to six hours of meditation a day. Day one I was calmer than I’ve ever been, but by day two I was crawling out of my skin. Average those out and you can see I successfully followed the Buddhists’ recommended “middle way”.
During our classes, we learned a lot of the specifics of Buddhism (like the four noble truths, the path out of samsara, etc.), but I will not spell out any of them here. You can get that stuff from a book. Instead, I will give some of my overall impressions, pieced together through absorption from my time at Tushita. Buddhism is a very tolerant religion, which is part of what makes it so attractive. For instance, they believe in ending the suffering of every sentient being, but we were told there were monks who are not vegetarians (May all non-delicious sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering). They encouraged us to try on everything they taught, and keep only what made sense to us. Another thing I simply adore about Buddhism is that there is no element of preaching to it. There is no desire to convert people to Buddhism; in fact, their standpoint seems to be that it is often better to stick to your existing religion. The logic behind this is that (most) all religions promote the same self-growth and truth seeking that they encourage. They readily endorse Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed as divine beings, in a very non-offensive way (there was an Indian Catholic priest in our class who was there to try meditation…he loved the class).
One tenet of Buddhism is to look internally instead of externally. Robina, a now rather famous Australian monk who is the subject of the documentary film “Chasing Buddha” (and who also taught the Tushita class before ours), tells how she spent her pre-nun days as an activist trying to change the world, later realizing she needed to change herself instead. This way of looking at the world often manifests itself in subtle ways. For instance, Buddhists believe in putting the needs of others, including animals, above their own. But this belief doesn’t (always) manifest externally. Rather than make sure every (external) animal has eaten before he has a scrap of food, a monk’s focus is on increasing his (internal) mental capacity for loving kindness, so that he may achieve enlightenment (become a Buddha) and become most beneficial to all beings. Also, Buddhists acknowledge a huge distinction between understanding something intellectually versus understanding it personally (I’m using this word "personally" just for convention). A good example is emptiness. A Buddhist would say that "Mary" doesn’t exist independently in the world, but rather is made up of all her body and mind parts, each made up of cells, each made up of molecules, etc. They use the concept "emptiness" to refer to the notion that Mary (and every other thing) does not in reality exist independently, and therefore should not be regarded as an independent entity. This concept (for me) is easy to understand intellectually. But when Mary has just gotten through chewing you a new one in front of a group of people, you would have had to have spent years training your mind to keep your cool, realizing there is no "Mary" actually insulting you.
Somewhere during the retreat, I had a big breakthrough in an area I wasn’t expecting: anger. For 32 years now I have been hell bent on convincing other people that I am right about [any subject]. Going into the retreat, I was already prepared for the logic battles that were about to take place over beliefs in karma and reincarnation. I was definitely going to be right that they do not exist; it was just a matter of whether I could find anyone sane enough to see that I was correct. Coming out of the retreat, I have a completely different attitude about this. I will share my mental shift here to inform, but also largely to repent to the people (everyone) I have steamrolled with my worldviews. I really regret that I have done that so consistently.
I tend to start off casually enough, debating a point with someone out of intrigue or boredom. But I then quickly become angry when my “opponent” doesn’t see my point of view. In my mind, I am clearly right, and it is frustrating beyond belief that the other person can’t see that. I didn’t realize before just how much anger plays a part in my reaction, and how that anger is self-generated. Intellectually, I understand that I can’t always be right, but I don’t understand it personally. Every time a debate arises, it is one of the times I really am right! My change in attitude, which I intend to make permanent (oh please brain don’t snap back to your old ways), takes place on two levels.
First, even if I am right (say I’m arguing 2+2=4), there is no need for me to become angry when someone disagrees. I have a strong need to be understood, and when someone denies me this satisfaction, it infuriates me. This is an illogical reaction; there is just no good reason for this to cause anger. Instead, I can have compassion for someone who thinks the answer is 5. Compassion is a much stronger choice. Second, 99% of the things I’m arguing have no clear-cut answer like "4". They are almost exclusively subjective topics. I have really come face to face with my arrogance in thinking I’m always on the correct side. I confronted it by (predictably) getting riled up during the retreat, then dealing with the feelings internally. My new approach, which is much more sound, it to apply the same skepticism to my own views that I previously reserved only for the views of others.
With this newfound humility, I have also reached a new perspective on scientific discovery and its limitations (science is often at the core of my self-righteous beliefs). Recently, fossils were found of a 3-foot tall, fully-grown human in Bali that lived only 13,000 years ago (very recent in evolutionary terms). The locals of the area had repeatedly told folk tales of shy, hobbit-like creatures that used to live on the island. If one of the locals had told me they believed the small humans existed, I would have instinctively ridiculed them for believing folklore over science. Two months ago, archaeologists “knew” such miniature humans never existed so recently in history. One lucky dig later, and science has a totally different opinion, suggesting the folklore was correct. There are myriad examples like this of scientists reversing previous positions as new evidence arises. So, especially when discussing topics like the human mind or the existence of an afterlife (areas where science has very little knowledge), I now feel every opinion should be respected. Specifically, I have a much more open mind to beliefs based on folklore. Just about all of my opinions on these subjects (and others) are still the same, but I now regard them as best guesses, which warrant no arrogance and obligate no convincing of others.
I also have a new perspective on seeking. Seeking is the term I use to describe the eternal search for more and better that all humans conduct. It manifests as the search for the perfect lover, the better job, the newer television, and the prettier clothes. For me, seeking often transcends even these categories, turning into a completely undefined project to find the "next big thing". I have made steady improvement over the past several years in taming my seeking, which I think I have a tendency to do more than most people. My new realization is that seeking is a horrible response to boredom and dissatisfaction, which (for me) are what seem to necessitate it. Paradoxically, when I feel the most like seeking is the best time to do just the opposite. A much better approach is to slow myself down and get a hold of my racing mind. I gained this perspective after observing my desire to seek disappear through meditation. Slowing the mind and getting in touch with the present is a great reminder that there is nowhere to get to. This is an important realization, because the search for the next big thing in the long run leads to emptiness. No sooner is it discovered than it begins its decline into the same old thing. Of course, as humans we will always have some level of seeking, and there are times when it really does seem to bring happiness (for instance, during a five month trip around the world). I now believe it is important to balance out this human condition with awareness that pegging your happiness to a perceived better future is a mistake.
