Whipping Down the Dharma Path
For Western Dummies
Introduction
Are you a low-capacity Dharma student? Would you like to be promoted to medium-capacity or even the super-intelligent group???
Are you sick and tired of practicing your butt off for a measly few merit points???
How would you like to get your hands on that galaxy full of jewels Shakyamuni is always talking about???
Is this whole Dharma business just too damn complicated???
These are serious problems. And HERE is a solution.
The Secret Practice
There's this secret Dharma practice. (Actually it's not secret; it's unknown because everyone ignores it.) This secret practice is highly effective at helping Western dummies speed down the Dharma Path. If you learn this practice, YOU WILL BE PROMOTED. You WILL achieve Shamata in this lifetime. And your teachers WILL smile when you log out of Zoom. Guaranteed!
The practice is called ... 'PAYING ATTENTION.' Ha! Most of us Western Dharma students pay attention like we were sleep-walking with our head in a paper bag. We think paying attention is simple. IT IS NOT! To earn that galaxy of jewels we must learn to pay skilled expert Earth-shaking laser-focused super-attention. I'll call that sort of attention 'D-vision' for short (i.e. Dharma vision, a cross between X-ray vision and Spidey-sense). D-vision is your key to racing down the Dharma path like a cheetah.
The Basic Idea
How do I, a lowly Dharma student who can't tell one deity from another, who wears a baseball cap in the gompa, how do I know all this stuff? Well, actually it's not that complicated.
In the realm of Samsara, what you see in front of your face, is what’s in front of your face! If you look steadily, fearlessly, seeking to understand the true nature of what is in front of your face, then BOOM! Insight! And down the Dharma Path you go. You look; you see; wisdom slaps you in the face. What could be simpler?
The idea is simple, but DOING IT is very very difficult. Why? Why would paying attention to what's in front of your nose, be so damn difficult. The answer is: BECAUSE YOUR MIND IS A TOTAL ASSHOLE!
Your Mind
How does your mind make the simple act of paying attention difficult? In two ways:
First, the mind likes to flit madly around, like a little bird looking here and there for food, danger and sex. (We work on this difficulty with Mindfulness meditation.)
Second, the mind WANTS things! Lots of things. Having a mind is like having a helicopter mother inside your head, who obsessively works to fulfill all your needs (food, shelter, a community, sex, play, friends, love, safety, power, status, rest, and on and on). Also, she doesn't want you realising anything that might cause other people to think you’re a weirdo (like Emptiness).
HER only interest is meeting YOUR needs, She creates this tangible world (Samsara) where she can plot and strategize and manipulate and meddle all day every day, to get those needs met. That's her goal and she'll happily create hell on Earth to get there. If you disagree with her or mess up her strategies she'll come down on you like a ton of bricks. She has instantaneous reflexes, photographic memory, she never stops watching (unless you get drunk as a skunk) and she is perfectly happy to drive you like a muleskinner with a bullwhip. No wonder you're depressed.
SHE KNOWS BEST! It's a massive job handling a screwup like you. And you're so lucky to have her.
OK. You want to see the true nature of what’s in front of your face, but your psychotic codependent mother-mind says: "You ungrateful brat. I’ve got a ton of shit to worry about, it's all for your benefit, and Enlightenment is at the bottom of the list, unless you can convince me that it will get you friends, sex, status, followers and a book contract." (In truth, the item at the bottom of her to-do list is your personal happiness. Enlightenment is even below that.)
YOU'RE a lowly Dharma student and you're up against this monstrous mother-mind, who controls the vertical, the horizontal, your entire inner and outer world (SHE CREATED THEM) and she's the POPE! (She decides what's right and wrong, good and bad.) How could you possibly stand up your mother-mind and learn D-vision? HOW?
The Practice
To restate our goal: We're looking at something. Let's call that thing our 'Object'. Our attention becomes steady and stable. Our fiendish mother-mind takes a quadruple-shot coffee break. And we look for our Object's true nature. We look without expectations or judgments, and without desires or fear. We are curious and open. We observe what goes into the pupil of our eye along the optic nerve and into our brain. Forget what you're supposed to see. Forget what you've been taught to see. We want to see what we actually DO see.
Now for the practices:
If you like Mindfulness practice, then that's the right place to start. But make it more than a daily centering exercise. (I talked to a guy who did it every day for 16 years. He finally got bored and quit.) There's a world of delicious practice which awaits beyond your basic: 'Concentrate on breath - Get distracted - Return to the breath,'
INVESTIGATE your Object. EXPERIMENT with different places, postures and Objects. Do it LONGER. Geshe Zopa suggested I increase my Mindfulness practice time by HALF AN HOUR every day! My practice took off like a rocket. If you keep pushing Mindfulness amazing things will happen.
If Mindfulness is not your cup of tea, no problem. GET CREATIVE.
Posture? Stand, walk, swim, drive, couch potato, finger in ear, yoga, crawl under the bed.
Object? A thing, a feeling, a body part, a sound, finger in your ear. Pet the pet. Chew.
For how long? Ten seconds, a minute, half an hour, three hours. One time a day or 100 times a day.
In either case, do it. Do it. Do it. The benefits are immeasurable. We develop D-vision by practicing it, over and over, thousands of times. With each attempt your skill gets a little sharper and your psychotic mother-mind slightly loosens her grip.
Apply a freight train load of joyful effort to your concentration. Engage with your objects. It's like docking with the International Space Station. You must engage. You must connect. If Dharma is like exploring a pitch-black cave, D-vision is like turning on your headlamp. YOU GET TO SEE!
Conclusion
Here are some really fun Objects to examine with your D-vision:
Any single sensation or feeling Back and forth between two Objects (lips, tongue, lips, tongue…) The experience of each successive moment Everything at once Follow your eyes as they examine a picture or scene Feelings of aversion and desire Your thoughts as they arise Feelings of suffering, mental or physical Colors, smells, sounds
WARNING: Danger danger danger. Energetic D-vision practice may cause your eyeballs to fall out (of your head). This is a good thing but don't force It. It's against the rules to squeeze or gouge or pop your eyes out. They must FALL out of their own accord. There will be no permanent physical damage. My eyeballs have fallen out at least eight times. They fell out yesterday. Just keep the pets away and avoid stepping on them.
Luckily subduing the mind is not an either-or proposition. You don't have to win the race to get the prize. If you subdue the mind even a tiny bit, you'll get a fabulous payoff. And, it's not all hard work. Just like learning to ride a bicycle, first you fall, then you're shaky, and finally it gets fun.
(On the other hand the mind is truly relentless. It's like a man-eating octopus. If you chop off one arm, it comes at you with the other seven. And in no time it's grown back the arm you chopped off.)
I hear someone thinking, 'You've told me to look, but why haven't you told me what I'm supposed to see?' There are many answers to this question:
It's your eyeball. How am I supposed to know what's in front of it?
Impermanence says both you and your Object are always changing.
The looking is really more important than what you see. It's as if the Dharma was scratched in tiny letters on the lens of your eye.
Things are complicated in Samsara. Look at a car and you also see related stuff like brand, model, age, condition, cleanliness, price, and on and on. In Nirvana it's more akin to a blob. Maybe the truth is ridiculously simple and you're looking for something complicated.
On the other hand, if you are coming up with zilch, ask your Object some questions. If you're lucky your Object will answer (nonverbally). Here's some fun ones:
Will you please strip down and show me your luminance?
What is your true nature? What is your essence?
Are you real? Or made up, like a story?
Are you changing as I look at you?
What would you look like if you had no name or history?
If I didn't exist what would you look like?
Are you inside my head or outside of my head?
Repeat a mantra or phrase while looking.
Training one's attention and subduing the mind, is a grand adventure; perhaps it's the grandest adventure of them all.
Don't forget:
You are the philosopher. You are the observer. You are the scientist. You are the detective. You are the explorer. YOU ARE THE EYEBALL (until it falls out).