Dr. John Young 9/18/05
Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville
Learning from the Dalai Lama
Every human being is engaged for their entire lives in at least two simultaneous continuing struggles, one is with the world, and the other with themselves. Much of the time, most of us feel that we are primarily involved with the world: with our relationships and our work, with our chosen groups and the communities that surround us. Yet, much of the tragedy, despair, confusion, and doubt are about our selves. It is an internal struggle with the different facets of our own beings. Like our outer struggles, our inner struggles also wax and wane. Sometimes, we feel focused and clear, calm and in balance; yet, moments or days later, we can be in turmoil: drifting or confused, anxious or feeling as though we are falling apart. This is true for old, young and the middle-aged. It is true for billionaires and those in poverty, for Ph.D.s and those without formal education, for the wildly successful, average people, and utter failures. It is this struggle within that the Buddhists have concentrated on for 2500 years. They had discovered thousands of varieties of the unconscious mind before Westerners had even discovered the idea of psychology.
I spent two months of my sabbatical this spring in countries with significant Buddhist influences: a few days in Bangkok, a week in Tibet, two weeks in India, and a month in Nepal. For that part of the Buddhist world, the most important Buddhist alive is the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan Buddhists and the political leader of the Tibetan refugees in exile, as well as a symbol of veneration and political revolt for the captive Tibetan population living in the Chinese Tibetan police state. Through political circumstances and the strength of his own personality and teachings, the Dalai Lama has become one of the most influential and respected spiritual people alive today in the world today.
Buddhism developed three great historic branches: the Theravada Buddhism of south and south-east Asia, which concentrates on personal enlightenment and sees the unattached meditating monk as the human ideal, the Mahayana Buddhism of the Orient, which dares to worship the Buddha and promise heaven even to lay-people, who may become bodhisattvas, enlightened beings who return to bring compassion to a suffering world, and Vajrayana Buddhism [often simply identified as Tibetan Buddhism], which combines the indigenous shamanistic faith of Tibet, Mahayana Buddhism, and tantric teachings from India.
For Vajrayana Buddhists, there are three great stages or yanas of spiritual development: first, hinayana: quieting of the mind and the relinquishing of attachment through mindfulness meditation, second, mahayana: training in compassion and loving-kindness, and tantrayana: which permits its rigorous practitioners to neutralize the gross mind and to make room for the subtle mind, the clear light of bliss, the only eternal aspect of existence, perhaps achieving it in a single lifetime.
The present Dalai Lama was born on July 6, 1935; so, he is now seventy years old. He was the son of a farmer in northeastern Tibet. When one Dalai Lama dies, the highest monks have a process of discovering a child born about the time of the previous Dalai Lama’s death that they decide is the new Dalai Lama. The present Dalai Lama was discovered at age two, enthroned when he was 4, rigorously educated with both Tibetan and Western learning, and hoisted into full political and spiritual power when he was 15 years old, after some 80,000 Chinese military invaded Tibet. At 19, he was trying to negotiate with the Chinese leaders, and at 21, he was visiting Nehru in India and having joint talks with the Chinese and Indian leaders. By 1959, the Tibetans were in armed revolt against their Chinese conquerors. The Capitol, Lhasa, exploded into demonstrations, and the Dalai Lama had to escape for his life to India, along with more than a hundred thousand Tibetans. The Chinese ruthlessly put down the revolt, killing many hundreds of thousands of Tibetans, destroying many of the monasteries, murdering thousands of the monks, and beginning the process that has converted Tibet into a Chinese province, with a Chinese majority and a police state.
Since the age of 24, Dalai Lama has been in exile, dependent upon the hospitality of India for himself and his displaced people. The true Tibetans now mostly live in India and Nepal. They have their own schools, handicrafts, and culture, and they are busy making economic and political progress in their adopted countries. He has helped to spread Tibetan Buddhist centers throughout the world. He is probably the most respected spiritual leader in the world by millions of people outside of his own religious community. He has helped exiled Tibetans evolve into a democratic, upbeat, and devoted people that model a variety of Buddhist virtues to the world. In 1989, the Dalai Lama received the Nobel Prize for Peace, as he said, on “behalf of oppressed people everywhere and for all those who struggle for freedom and work for world peace and on behalf of the people of Tibet.” His hope is still that Tibet will be liberated “with truth, courage, and determination as our weapons. Our struggle must remain nonviolent and free of hatred.”
Periodically, I add another mentor to my daily spiritual practice, and I try to summarize what I am learning from this spiritual mentor with three phrases. Not surprisingly, my most recent addition was the Dalai Lama. The three phrases are: overcoming anger; facing limitations, and finding happiness through equanimity. I have struggled with tendencies toward anger and impatience most of my life. As I have aged, I have become more acutely aware of my limitations. More than any other spiritual person I have read about, the Dalai Lama focuses on happiness as the central human goal; but, in classical Buddhist fashion, he is convinced that the way to happiness is by achieving equanimity. The Dalai Lama also says that he has tendencies toward impatience and anger, and knowing about his life and his peoples’ tragic struggles have made me realize that few people in the world have more right to be angry. Yet, he has found ways to overcome anger. For all of his life, the Dalai Lama has faced grave and pervasive limitations: an upbringing significantly without his family and sometimes by strangers, violation, manipulation, exile, and a world in which he could take almost nothing for granted, yet he has flourished within his limitations. His feelings about happiness seem genuine and convincing, and he demonstrates by his life that discovering and practicing equanimity can bring happiness.
The Dalai Lama sees anger as an exaggerated wanting to be separated from someone or something. An angry person is unable to bear the object of his/her anger and even desires to cause harm to the object of his/her anger. The Dalai Lama’s antidotes to anger include the following:
1. patience - taking the time to think
2. the truth of suffering - problems and frustrations are facts of life
3. karma - the real reasons for our problems are usually our own past actions
4. changing or accepting - there are things you can change, if you can, then stop being angry and make the necessary changes; other things you cannot change, then accept the inevitable, the wisdom is knowing the difference
5. realistic analysis - this is the Dalai Lama’s favorite form of meditation [sounds UU doesn’t it?]
6. recognizing our interdependence
7. the basic equality of all human beings - we are all struggling
8. listening and communicating
9. putting your anger in perspective - is this worth getting angry about?
10. persuade the other that change really needs to happen through your own forgiveness and by moving past anger
11. being open-handed - often if you control your gestures, you stem your anger
12. meditate - sit with your analytical mind and focus on overcoming anger or expressing compassion.
Facing limitations is progressively realizing that your perceptions are not the whole of reality, that many of your hopes are not realistic, and that much of what is most important is beyond your own ego. The great awakening of human maturity is the realization that the wide world beyond your own perceptions is mysterious, wonderful, exciting and fulfilling. That life can be full and happy without realizing your unrealistic hopes, sometimes by simply letting them go, sometimes by figuring out realistic ways to approximate them, and sometimes by discovering more feasible alternatives. And that discovering that you are a working portion of larger and more enduring systems is the true path of happiness and immortality. Our egos do not endure, but what is most worthy about us not only survives but often flourishes.
Equanimity is the point of balance between the extremes of indifference and anxiety. Indifference is not equanimity; indifference is simply a passive and depressed form of egotism. The opposite end of the spectrum is the states of anxiety, worry, stress and paranoia. It is the process of dividing ourselves into good and bad. This causes the same internal distrust that many people feel by dividing everyone around them into good and bad, evil and virtuous, saved and unsaved. Equanimity is unselfish, witnessing consciousness that cares but is not attached, that is compassionate but does not try to tell people what to do or how to solve their problems, that is loving but does not try to possess or control the objects of their love. Equanimity is altruism toward all beings, including yourself. You cannot become effectively compassionate if you do not learn how to be fair but not judgmental against yourself.
The object of life is to be happy. Happiness is found by overcoming anger, by facing limitations, and by continuing to do your best to live with equanimity.
Meditation
A child was often getting angry. The child’s parent gave her a hammer and a bunch of nails and asked her to pound a nail clear into a fence every time she felt angry. The first day she pounded 37 nails into the fence, but it got harder to pound the nails, and finally a day came when she pounded no new nails into the fence. She was pleased with herself and went to her parent. Her parent praised her for overcoming her anger, and told her that each day she went without getting angry; she could take one nail out of the fence. After many days, she had finally pulled all the extra nails out of the fence. Again, her parent praised her for learning to overcome her anger. They went to the fence. See, you have done well, but look at all the holes in the fence. The fence will never be quite the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar in people just like these nail holes. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out, it won’t matter how many times you say, I’m sorry, the wound will still be there. It is much better to feel regret and to ask for forgiveness for your anger than not to do so, but it is even much better not to let your anger loose in the first place.