The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction however and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things is not understood, the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail. The Way is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. In- deed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things. Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, not in inner feelings of emptiness. Be serene in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves. When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity, your very effort fills you will activity. As long as you remain in one extreme or the other, you will never know Oneness. Those who do not live in the single Way, fail in both activity and passivity, assertion and denial. To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know. To return to the root is to find the meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source. At the moment of inner Enlightenment there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness. The changes that appear to occur in the empty world we call real only because of our ignorance. Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions. Do not remain in the dualistic state, avoid such pursuits carefully. If there is even a trace of this and that, of right and wrong, the Mind-essence will be lost in confusion. Although all dualities come from the One, do not be attached even to this One. When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way. When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist. When thought objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes, as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish. Things are objects because of the subject (mind); the mind (subject) is such be- cause of things (object). Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness. In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world. If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine, you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion. To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult, but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: the faster they hurry, the slower they go, and clinging (attachment) cannot be limited: even to be attached to the idea of Enlightenment is to go astray. Just let things be in their own way and there will be neither coming nor going. Obey the nature of things (your own nature), and you will walk freely and undisturbed. When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden, for everything is murky and unclear and the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness. What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations? If you wish to move in the One Way, do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas. Indeed, to accept them fully is identical with true Enlightenment. The wise man strives to no goals, but the foolish man fetters himself. There is one Dharma, not many; distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant. To seek Mind with the (discriminating) mind is the greatest of all mistakes. Rest and un- rest derive from passion; with Enlightenment there is no liking and disliking. All dualities come from ignorant inference. They are like dreams or flowers in air: foolish to try to grasp them. Gain and loss, right and wrong: such thoughts must finally be abolished at once. If the eye never sleeps, all dreams will naturally cease. If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence. To understand the mystery of this One essence is to be released from all entanglements. When all things are seen equally, the timeless Self- essence is reached. No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state. Consider movement stationary and the stationary in motion, both the movement and rest disappear. When such dualities cease to exist, Oneness itself cannot exist. To this ultimate finality, no law or description applies. For the unified mind in accord with the Way, all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are free from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind's power. Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value. In this world of Suchness, there is neither self nor other-than-self. To come directly into harmony with this reality, just simply say when doubt arises, "Not two." In this "not two" nothing is separate, nothing is excluded. No matter when or where, Enlightenment means entering this truth. And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space; in it a single thought is ten thousand years. Emptiness here, Emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes. Infinitely large and infinitely small; no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen. So too with Being and non-Being. Do not waste time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this. One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality. Because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind. Words! The Way is beyond language, for in it there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.

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Beginning the Journey Into Chan
Enter the heart of Chan practice

I. What is Chan?
Some people ask, "What is Chan?" The Buddhist sutra clearly states, "Chan is the mind of the Buddha; the Scripture is the mouth of the Buddha; the Precept is the body of the Buddha." Chan is the Buddha's mind. All of the Buddhist sutras and scriptures, i.e., the Twelve Canons in the Tripitaka, or the recorded words of the Buddha, as well as all of his actions, originate from this very mind. With the scientific advances of today, most people tend to revere or worship science without realizing that science is the crystallization of human wisdom. To generate wisdom, we need to have a mind of purity and clarity; the mind should be peaceful and serene, at ease and tranquil. The ancient sages have taught, "In simplicity we see our aspirations. In calmness we attain far-reaching realization." If we wish to have wisdom, we must maintain this mind of purity, clarity, and awareness.
Chan is the mind of the Buddha. When we study Buddhism and cultivate the Way, we must strive to walk with the Buddha. The ancients have reminded us,
No matter how high the mountain,
we aspire to reach it;
No matter how far the journey,
we aspire to walk it.
We admire those of lofty character
We follow them as far as we can;
Although it may not be attained,
Our mind can aspire to it.
Thus, we must learn from the Buddha's wisdom, compassion, samadhi (or concentration mastery), as well as his blessings and virtues, his countless merits, and his supernormal powers with their subtle, wondrous functions. Yet where do these qualities come from? They are generated by the mind. This mind is not the scattered mind that most people experience every day. It is not a mind of greed, hatred, ignorance, or pride; nor is it a mind of jealousy and vengeance. Then what kind of mind is it? It is the Chan mind, the true mind of the Buddha. Chan tells us how to obtain a mind of samadhi, purity, and awareness. Based on this understanding, Chan is wisdom, the wellspring of life. If we wish to have a meaningful and fulfilling life, we must use the methods of Chan practice to achieve the goal.
Chan is also right mindfulness, right samadhi. Right mindfulness is the mind that is free from delusions and confusion, and always in control. When this mind is lucid and pure, it has samadhi power and is at ease and free from vexations. Then our will, our spirit, and our wisdom will be of great help to us in all circumstances. On the other hand, if this mind is unstable and worrisome; if we do not understand the real principles of life; if we only see the riches before us; if we only pursue the mundane, or pursue extravagant and decadent pleasures, or pursue fame and fortune; this is an ordinary mundane existence, without much meaning. Why? Because living a life of material-grasping and pleasure-seeking and thinking that death is the end of it all is a misunderstanding of the true meaning of life and reality. Further, it is a life of superficiality and vanity. In contrast, if we realize that this mind harbors infinite wisdom and countless merits, then this mind is an endless treasure-house. When we recognize this principle and practice diligently, we can realize this Chan mind, and then this mind of ours is a pool of living water. At all times, our wisdom, all of our strength, and even all of our various merits are inexhaustible. Thus, this is a life filled with joy.
Chan is not lofty and unattainable. We only need to realize this very mind, our inherent Buddha nature; then, whether we are walking, sitting, sleeping, hauling wood, or carrying rice, we will realize that every action is Chan. As long as we let go of the mind's vexations, delusions, and attachments, that is Chan.
II. The Importance of Chan Practice
Practicing Chan can calm the body and mind and help us incorporate the Buddha's teaching into daily living to improve our lives. When we realize this mind, in all our actions, whether we are walking, staying, sitting, or lying down, we will be at ease. We will feel nothing lacking, have no delusive thoughts, and not be confused. It is like discovering a wide open road that we can walk firmly on forever.
Our vexations arise mainly because of the delusions that cloud or obscure our original mind. The aim of Chan practice is to realize this originally pure and lucid mind, and to realize that this pure and lucid mind is present at every moment. We will then be at ease. We will also realize that everyone possesses this inherent Buddha nature, and hence, we will not feel that we are insignificant or lacking or worthless.
In our present society, most people seek and emphasize material things. Unfortunately, no one gains satisfaction from these worldly pursuits. If we understand that Buddhism offers us another possibility, another world of the spirit, then no matter whether we are rich or poor, noble or lowly, we will understand that vexations can be transformed to Bodhi, which is awakening or enlightenment, and that peace and stability of body and mind is available to everyone.
When people with high receptiveness can understand Buddhism, they can use their minds of compassion to help all sentient beings and use wisdom to serve society. If those who are less receptive can understand Buddhism, their minds will be free from vexations and envy. People in our present society often have feelings of envy and hatred. When they see others with wealth and power, their minds tend to lose their equanimity. If they can understand the Buddhist principle of causality, realize this clear, pure original mind, and constantly abide in this mind, they can serve society without discriminating between self and others. Purity and clarity of the mind are true wealth. The mind is filled with endless merits and treasures.
Chan practice enables us to understand that the inner realm of the mind is our true refuge and that we no longer need to seek blindly for external things such as fame and fortune, and also practicing Chan facilitates the awareness that we no longer need to envy others. When we reach this understanding, then we can fully manifest our inner compassion and wisdom. If people from all levels of society have this understanding in common, we will have peace and stability in this world.
Because most people have vexations and delusive thoughts clouding their minds, they do not experience higher spiritual understanding. If we can let go and eradicate our vexations and sever our attachments, then this mind will be like a pool of still water, unperturbed by the slightest wind. It will be like a mirror unstained by any impurities and at this time one truly experiences true wisdom and supernormal powers because supernormal powers and true wisdom cannot be sought from the outside, they are the mind's original ability. This mind harbors infinite wisdom and power. Chan practice seeks to discover this hidden wisdom and power. As the Chan patriarchs have said, "Realizing the mind is seeing the true nature; seeing the true nature is becoming a Buddha." If we can let go and get rid of our vexations such as greed, anger, ignorance, and pride, and thus uncover our inherent wisdom, then we will turn knowledge into wisdom and realize perfect enlightenment. After vexations are eradicated, the mind becomes calm and tranquil; the body naturally becomes healthy. When we practice in this direction-toward discovering our inherent wisdom-it is the Way; it is Chan. Chan is samadhi, perfect absorption; it is right concentration; it is what the Diamond Sutra refers to as the "mind of non-abidance." When this mind becomes peaceful and tranquil, being at ease and like a pool of still water, that is the true meaning of Chan practice.
III. The Wondrous Functions of Chan
The Chan patriarchs have said, "Hauling wood and carrying rice, this is no different from the wondrous function of supernormal powers." This is truly realizing the Chan mind. Chan is like the water's source. When we find this source, this water is inexhaustible. This is living water; it is not stagnant. When we discover our original mind, it is like discovering the water's source.
The inherent wisdom and merits in the minds of sentient beings are exactly the same as those in the Buddha. The Buddhist sutra states, "It is not a bit more in the sage, nor a bit less in the ordinary person." When one becomes a Buddha or Bodhisattva, this mind does not increase the least bit. In all sentient beings, even in insects and animals, this original nature is not decreased the least bit. If we wish to open up this mind that has long been entrapped by our defilements, we must follow a method. The Buddhist sutra says that there are 84,000 dharma doors. It is like having 84,000 keys. Each person's mind is imprisoned by different defilements. Therefore, we need 84,000 different keys to open the doors of our distinct minds. When we understand this principle, we realize that it is worthwhile for everyone to seek the truths of Buddhism. The meaning of Chan lies in purifying and elevating this very mind-from opposites to the absolute, from a coarse mind to a fine mind. The Buddhist sutra says, "The mind of a sentient being is the coarse within the coarse, the Bodhisattva's mind is the fine within the coarse, the Buddha's mind is the fine within the fine.," Because it is the fine within the fine, the Buddha's mind can understand clearly every problem.
Most people do not know how to use this mind. The Doctrine of the Mean states, "When we unleash the mind, it contains the whole world; when we constrict the mind, it becomes hidden." This means that when we open up our mind, it contains the whole dharma realm, the whole universe. When we constrict our mind, no one can find it-thieves cannot steal it, robbers cannot seize it. The Buddhadharma also says, "When we expand our mind, it contains the whole world, when we constrict it, it is only a dust mote." The wondrous working of the mind is indeed unfathomable. When this mind is awakened, it is Buddha; when it is deluded, it is a sentient being; when erroneous views arise, then it is Mara or the devil. If we understand this principle, we not only can become the "master of the country," but the "master of the whole universe." Then, isn't our life in this world filled with great blessings and honor? When we think this way, our mind is indeed at rest, and life becomes more fulfilling and meaningful. This is the doctrine of Chan.
The famous poet Tao YuanMing wrote the following poem:

Living simply in the mundane world,
Yet not hearing the clamor of horse and carriage,
I ask you how one achieves this:
[You reply] when the mind is unattached,
This place is naturally secluded.
I gather chrysanthemums beneath the Eastern arbor
And leisurely view the Southern mountains.
The atmosphere of the mountain is beautiful at dawn and dusk;
Flying birds return in succession:
There is true meaning here;
Wishing to describe it one is at a loss for words.
This poem describes the realm of Chan. What is the "atmosphere of the mountain" spoken of here? What is the "flying bird"? The flying bird is the freedom of this mind and the atmosphere of the mountain is the sphere of this mind. "There is true meaning here"-true meaning is the True Mind spoken by the Buddha, it is the mind at ease. "Wishing to describe it one is at a loss for words" means that when we try to speak about it we lose its meaning, yet it does not restrain us from attempting to describe it.
There is both a profound and simple meaning in Chan. The simple implies a lower level of understanding; the profound a higher level. It is like going to school-from kindergarten to elementary school, all the way up to college; it also involves different levels of comprehension. The ancients have taught, "A hundred great enlightenments, a thousand small enlightenments." This teaching denotes the levels of the enlightened mind and the various breakthroughs in the understanding of life and universe.
How can we harmonize the mind with the environment? That is exactly what Chan can help us to do. When we are awakened to Chan, we will be in perfect harmony and be at ease at all times. Whether we are hauling wood or carrying rice, receiving or sending off guests, every act is the Way. Although our outer environment undergoes myriad changes and transformations, our mind's realm always dwells in suchness and is always knowing and clear. This is the subtle, wondrous function of Chan.
These days there are people who go to temples just to seek help from the Four-sided Buddha. People have heard that the Four-sided Buddha is very responsive; therefore they vie with each other to go and pay respect to him. Think about it. Where is the Four-sided Buddha? We should know that all Buddhas are equal. All dharmas are equal. Amitabha Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, Medicine Buddha, and even all Buddhas of the ten directions are all the same; their wisdom, supernormal powers, merits and blessings, samadhi, and compassion, are all at the highest level. When you understand the mind of Chan, you will be able to observe and understand even the tiniest things in the world. If you can do this, you are now the Four-sided Buddha. This is what the broad meaning of Chan implies.
Yet with respect to the narrow definition of Chan, it is this very mind. For example, if we chant the Buddha's name until the mind becomes unperturbed, that is Chan. Chanting the sutras, the mantras, practicing concentration and meditation, studying Chan, these are all different methods; they are meant to help us to turn our conceptual understanding to nondualistic wisdom, to unify body and mind, and to arrive at the realm of the absolute of this very mind.
No matter whether the meaning is broad or narrow, Chan cannot be separate from this very mind. If we do not deviate from our original nature and are masters of our minds at all times, then this is precisely the wondrous manifestation of Chan.

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Asceticism is Useless

Following the example of the Buddha, the Buddhist tradition has generally rejected asceticism as an extreme practice that has no benefit. People should follow the Buddhist path in order to transcend suffering, and so it makes no sense in a Buddhist context to seek liberation through painful practices.
Asceticism in its various forms is basically painful;
And, at best, the reward of asceticism is heaven.
But all the worlds are prone to change,
And so the efforts of the hermitages are of little use.
Those who forsake the relatives they love and their pleasures
To perform asceticism and win a place in heaven
Must leave it in the end
And go to greater bondage.
A person who tortures the body and calls it asceticism
In the hope of continuing to satisfy desire
Does not understand the evils of rebirth,
And through much suffering goes to further suffering.
All living sentient beings are afraid of death
And yet they all strive to be born again;
Since they act in this way, death is inevitable,
And they are plunged in that which they most fear.
Some suffer hardship for mere worldly gain;
Others will take to asceticism in hope of heaven.
All beings fail in their hopeful search for happiness
And fall, poor wretches, into great trouble.
Not that the effort is to be blamed which leaves
The lower and seeks the higher aim.
But wise people should work with an equal effort
To reach the goal where further work is not needed.
If it is proper to torture the body
Then the body's ease is contrary to what is proper;
Thus if, by doing what is proper, joy is obtained in a future life
Dharma must flower in non-dharma.
The body is commanded by the mind,
Through mind it acts, through mind it ceases to act.
All that is needed is to subdue the mind,
For the body is a log of wood without it....
Those who try to purify their deeds
By bathing at a place which they hold sacred
Merely give their hearts some satisfaction,
For water will not purify people's wrong-doing.

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"The Heart Jewel of the Fortunate"
Dudjom Rinpoche's Personal Advice
on Dzogchen Praxis

Taken from Counsels from My Heart by Dudjom Rinpoche
Shambhala: Boston, 2001


Homage to my teacher!
The Great Master of Oddiyana once said:
Don't investigate the root of things,
Investigate the root of Mind!
Once the mind's root has been found,
You'll know one thing, yet all is thereby freed.
But if the root of Mind you fail to find,
You will know everything but nothing
understand.

When you start to meditate on your mind, sit up with your body straight, allowing your breath to come and go naturally. Gaze into the space in front of you with eyes neither closed nor wide open. Think to yourself that for the sake of all beings who have been your mothers, you will watch awareness, the face of Samantabhadra. Pray strongly to your root teacher, who is inseparable from Padmasambhava, the Guru from Oddiyana, and then mingle your mind with his. Settle in a balanced, meditative state.

Once you are settled, however, you will not stay long in this empty, clear state of awareness. Your mind will start to move and become agitated. It will fidget and run here, there, and everywhere, like a monkey. What you are experiencing at this point is not the nature of the mind but only thoughts. If you stick with them and follow them, you will find yourself recalling all sorts of things, thinking about all sorts of needs, planning all sorts of activities. It is precisely this kind of mental activity that has hurled you into the dark ocean of samsara in the past, and there's no doubt it will do so in the future. It would be so much better if you could cut through the ever spreading, black delusion of your thoughts.

What if you are able to break out of your chain of thoughts? What is awareness like? It is empty, limpid stunning, light, free, joyful! It is not something bounded or demarcated by its own set of attributes. There is nothing in the whole of samsara and nirvana that it does not embrace. From time without beginning, it is within us, inborn. We have never been without it, yet it is wholly outside the range of action, effort, and imagination.

But what, you will ask, is it like to recognize awareness, the face of rigpa? Although you experience it, you simply cannot describe it - it would be like a dumb man trying to describe his dreams! It is impossible to distinguish between yourself resting in awareness and the awareness you are experiencing. When you rest quite naturally, nakedly, in the boundless state of awareness, all those speedy, pestering thoughts that would not stay quiet even for an instant - all those memories, all those plans that cause you so much trouble - lose their power. They disappear in the spacious, cloudless sky of awareness. They shatter, collapse, vanish. All their strength is lost in awareness.

You actually have this awareness within you. It is the clear, naked wisdom of dharmakaya. But who can introduce you to it? On what should you take your stand? What should you be certain of? To begin with, it is your teacher who shows you the state of your awareness. And when you recognize it for yourself, it is then that you are introduced to your own nature. All the appearances of both samsara and nirvana are but the display of your own awareness; take your stand upon awareness alone. Just like the waves that rise up out of the sea and sink back into it, all thoughts that appear sink back into awareness. Be certain of their dissolution, and as a result you will find yourself in a state utterly devoid of both meditator and something meditated upon - completely beyond the meditating mind.

"Oh, in that case," you might think, "there's no need for meditation." Well, I can assure you that there is a need! The mere recognition of awareness will not liberate you. Throughout your lives from beginningless time, you have been enveloped in false beliefs and deluded habits. From then till now you have spent every moment as a miserable, pathetic slave of your thoughts! And when you die, it's not at all certain where you will go. You will follow your karma, and you will have to suffer. This is the reason why you must meditate, continuously preserving the sate of awareness you have been introduced to. The omniscient Longchenpa has said, "You may recognize your own nature, but if you do not meditate and get used to it, you will be like a baby left on a battlefield: you'll be carried off by the enemy, the hostile army of your own thoughts!" In general terms, meditation means becoming famiIiar with the state of resting in the primordial uncontrived nature, through being spontaneously, naturally, constantly mindful. It means getting used to leaving the state of awareness alone, divested of all distraction and clinging.

How do we get used to remaining in the nature of the mind? When thoughts come while you are meditating, let them come; there's no need to regard them as your enemies. When they arise, relax in their arising. On the other hand, if they don's arise, don't be nervously wondering whether or not they will. Just rest in their absence. If big, well-defined thoughts suddenly appear during your meditation, it is easy to recognize them. But when slight, subtle movements occur, it is hard to realize that they are there until much later. This is what we call namtok wogyu, the undercurrent of mental wandering. This is the thief of your meditation, so it is important for you to keep a close watch. If you can be constantly mindful, both in meditation and afterward, when you are eating, sleeping, walking, or sitting, that's it - you've got it right!

The great master Guru Rinpoche has said:
A hundred things may be explained,
a thousand told,
But one thing only should you grasp.
Know one thing and everything is freed-
Remain within your inner nature,
your awareness!

It is also said that if you do not meditate, you will not gain certainty: if you do, you will. But what sort of certainty? If you meditate with a strong, joyful endeavor, signs will appear showing that you have become used to staying in your nature. The fierce, tight clinging that you have to dualistically experienced phenomena will gradually loosen up, and your obsession with happiness and suffering, hopes and fears, and so on, will slowly weaken. Your devotion to the teacher and your sincere trust in his instructions will grow. After a time, your tense, dualistic attitudes will evaporate and you will get to the point where gold and pebbles, food and filth, gods and demons, virtue and nonvirtue, are all the same for you-you'll be at a loss to choose between paradise and hell! But until you reach that point (while you are still caught in the experiences of dualistic perception), virtue and nonvirtue, buddhafields and hells, happiness and pain, actions and their results - all this is reality for you. As the Great Guru has said, "My view is higher than the sky, but my attention to actions and their results is finer than flour."

So don't go around claiming to be some great Dzogchen meditator when in fact you are nothing but a farting lout, stinking of alcohol and rank with lust!

It is essential for you to have a stable foundation of pure devotion and samaya, together with a strong, joyful endeavor that is well balanced, neither too tense nor too loose. If you are able to meditate, completely turning aside from the activities and concerns of this life, it is certain that you will gain the extraordinary qualities of the profound path of Dzogchen. Why wait for future lives? You can capture the primordial citadel right now, in the present.

This advice is the very blood of my heart. Hold it close and never let it go!

Counsels from my Heart, Dudjom Rinpoche. Chapter 7.

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The Jewel Rosary of an Awakening Warrior
Byang-chub-sems-dpa' nor-bu'i phreng-ba
Bodhisattvamaniavali
Composed by
the great Indian pandit
Dipamkara Shrijana
(Palden Atisha)

Homage to great compassion.
Homage to all spiritual masters.
Homage to the deities of devotion.
Abandon all doubts and cherish
exertion for accomplishing the practice.
Abandon sleepiness, dullness and laziness
and always exert enthusiastic effort.
5 With recollection, alertness and watchfulness
always guard every door of the senses.
Three times during the day and night, again and again
investigate your mental continuum.
Proclaim your own faults
10 and seek not mistakes in others.
Hide your own good qualities
but proclaim the good qualities of others.
Reject acquisitions and honours
and always reject desire for fame.
15 Desire little, be content
and repay acts of kindness.
Meditate on love and compassion
and stabilize the awakening mind.
Avoid the ten unwholesome actions
20 and always stabilize your faith.
Conquer anger and arrogance
and possess a humble mind.
Avoid wrong livelihoods
and live a life of truth (dharma).
25 Abandon all worldly possessions
and be adorned by the gems of superiors.
Abandon all frivolities
and abide in solitude.
Abandon all senseless talk
30 and always control your speech.
When seeing your master or teacher
perform services with respect.
Towards a person having the eye of the doctrine
and towards sentient beings who are beginners
35 develop the recognition of them as teachers.
When seeing any sentient beings, develop
the recognition of them as parents and children.
Abandon misleading friends
and rely on virtuous spiritual companions.
40 Abandon minds of anger and unhappiness
and wherever you go be happy.
Abandon attachment to everything
and abide free from attachment.
Attachment will never procure you a happy rebirth;
45 it kills the life of liberation.
Wherever you see practices (leading to) happiness,
always exert effort in them.
Whatever you have started to do,
accomplish that very thing first.
50 Do everything well in this way,
otherwise nothing will be achieved.
Always be apart from liking evil.
Whenever a pompous mind arises,
flatten such arrogance.
55 Recall the teachings of your master.
When a cowardly mind arises,
praise the sublimity of the mind.
Whenever objects of attraction or aversion arise,
meditate on the emptiness of both;
60 view them as illusions and emanations.
When hearing any offensive words,
view them as an echo.
When your body is afflicted by harm,
view this as your previous actions.
65 Abide well in solitude, beyond town limits,
like the corpses of wild game.
Be by yourself, conceal yourself
and dwell without attachment.
Always stabilize (awareness of) your yidam and,
70 whenever laziness or lassitude arise,
enumerate these faults to yourself
and feel remorse from your heart.
If you see others,
speak calmly and sincerely.
75 Avoid a wrathful and frowning expression
and always remain cheerful.
When seeing others, continuously
be pleased to give without being miserly.
Discard all jealousy.
80 To protect the mind of another,
avoid all conflict
and always have patience.
Do not be a flatterer or fickle,
but always be capable of remaining steadfast.
85 Avoid belittling others and
remain respectful in your manners.
When giving advice to others,
have compassion and thoughts for their benefit.
Do not disparage spiritual doctrines
90 and be intent on whichever you admire.
Through the door of the ten dharma practices,
exert an effort throughout both day and night.
Whatever virtues are collected during the three times,
dedicate them for the unsurpassable great awakening.
95 Distribute your merit for all sentient beings.
Always offer the seven-limbed prayer
and great aspirations for the path.
If you act in this way, the two accumulations
of merit and wisdom will be accomplished.
100 Also, with the eradication of the two obscurations,
thus fulfilling the purpose of having gained a human form,
unsurpassable full awakening will be achieved.
The gem of faith, the gem of ethics,
the gem of generosity, the gem of hearing,
105 the gem of consideration,
the gem of shame and the gem of intelligence:
these are the seven supreme gems.
These seven gems are never exhausted.
Do not tell this to non-humans.
110 Examine your speech when amidst many people.
Examine your mind when living alone.
This has been composed by the Indian master Dipamkara Shrijnana, the Glorious
Illuminator, the Essence of Primordial Awareness.
Translated from the Tibetan by Sherpa Tulku and Brian Beresford, for Wisdom
Publications, London.

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The Nine Stages of Training the Mind
by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

As the lineage of meditators sat on their cushions and worked with their minds, they saw the same unfolding process: nine ways that the mind can be true to its inherent stability, clarity and strength. In their descriptions of nine stages of training the mind through the practice of shamatha meditation, or "peaceful abiding," they left us signposts of that process. These guidelines are helpful because the mind is so vast that if we're left to our own devices, we'll usually just wander in thought. These nine stages are a map of the meditative process.
The first four stages-placement, continual placement, repeated placement and close placement-have to do with developing stability. Stages five and six-taming and pacifying-have to do with developing clarity. And the last three stages-thoroughly pacifying, one-pointed and equanimity-have to do with building strength.
Placement
Placing our mind on the breath is the first thing we do in meditation. In the moment of placing our mind, it's like we're mounting a horse: we put our foot in the stirrup and pull ourselves up to the saddle. It's a matter of taking our seat properly.
This moment of placement starts when we extract our mind from its engagement with events, problems, thoughts and emotions. We take that wild and busy mind and place it on the breath. Even though we're placing our consciousness, which isn't physical, placement feels very physical. It's as deliberate as placing a rock on top of a leaf.
In order for placement to be successful, we have to formally acknowledge that we're letting go of concepts, thoughts and emotions: "Now I'm placing my mind upon the breath." What happens in that moment? Our attachments are uprooted. If we can even attempt such a thing, our discursiveness is greatly reduced. At the same time, by placing it on the breath, we're gathering the mind that's spread thin all over.
For beginning meditators the first stage is where we learn how to balance the focus on breathing, recognition of thoughts and holding the posture. It's a grace period during which we develop good meditation habits. As we continue in our practice, placement is always the first step. It's that moment at the beginning of each session when we recognize and acknowledge that we've begun meditating. Because it establishes our attitude toward the rest of the session, it's the most important stage. The moment of placement gives our meditation a crisp, clean start. If we begin in a vague or ambiguous way, then our meditation will only continue to be vague and ambiguous. Like placing a domino, how carefully we place our mind in the first stage will directly affect the development of the next.
After that first moment, each time you choose to recognize and acknowledge a thought and return your consciousness to the breath, you're learning placement. It's such a small act, so innocuous, but it's one of the most courageous things you can do. When you recognize and release that thought, you can take pride in yourself. You've overcome laziness. You've remembered the instructions. You can feel happy coming back to the breath. Don't worry that you're going to have to do it again-you're going to do it thousands of times. That's why this is called practice.
Each time you remember to place your mind on the breath, you're moving forward. Just by letting a thought go, you're extracting yourself from concepts, negative emotions and bewilderment. You're letting go of the need to be endlessly entertained and consumed. You have to do it again and again and again. Change happens one breath at a time, one thought at a time. Each time you return to the breath, you're taking one step away from addiction to discursiveness and fear and one step forward on the path of enlightenment, beginning with developing compassion for yourself.
I love golf. I play it whenever I can. No matter what kind of game I'm having, I can hit only one ball at a time. Each ball is the only ball; my mind has to be fresh every time. If I think of the balls I've hit or the balls I will hit, I'm not really hitting this ball. I'm only ingraining bad habits. It's the same with placement. If you're not crisp and fresh in recognizing and releasing thoughts, you're not really meditating; you're ingraining sloppiness. Those thoughts will gain power, and eventually you won't be meditating at all. You'll just be thinking.
Recognizing, acknowledging and releasing a thought is like reaching the top of a mountain. It's worthy of the warrior's cry, "Ki ki so so!" What we celebrate is leaving behind the self-indulgent fantasies that will rob us of our life unless we work with them properly. Inspiration, view, effort, trust, mindfulness and awareness support us in this.
The more we're able to gather our attention and focus, the stronger our mind becomes, the stronger the experience becomes and the stronger the result becomes. We know we're able to place our minds properly when we can hold our focus on the breathing for roughly twenty-one cycles without our mind becoming enormously distracted.
Continual Placement
Placing our mind on the breath is now fairly easy. We've learned to mount the horse, and now we feel comfortable being in the saddle. The horse is walking along the trail. We're experiencing how it feels to be on the breath, to be continually in placement. When discursiveness and distraction take us off the trail, by and large we're able to implement placement and get back on. What allows us to do this-continual placement-is further development of mindfulness and awareness, lack of laziness and remembering the instructions.
Another reason we're able to successfully place our mind on the breath is that we have confidence in the reasons why we're meditating. We do it with enthusiasm because we know it will bring us peace. We see the futility of outside concerns, fantasies, thoughts and emotions. We're willing to give them up at least for the period of our meditation because we see the benefits of doing so. Placement has become a reasonable thing to do.
When resting our mind on the breathing and relating to our thoughts with ease becomes the norm, we're coming to the end of this stage. A benchmark is that we're about to rest our minds for roughly 108 cycles of the breath without being caught in distraction. Through 108 breaths, in and out, we can be mindful of the breathing. Although we may experience some discursiveness, the thoughts aren't bothersome or large enough that we lose mindfulness and forget the breathing altogether.
At this stage our mindfulness and stability last only so long; then our mind drifts off. But when the mainstay of our practice is that we can stay on the breathing for 108 breaths, giving ourselves a little wiggle room in that we will be neither completely still nor completely distracted. Then we've graduated from the second to the third stage, which is known as repeated placement.
Repeated Placement
We might feel like we have been doing repeated placement since the beginning. But the landscape of meditation is vast, and the stages progressively subtle, because they describe our experience, which becomes more and more refined. The Tibetan word for this stage is len, which means to retrieve, to gather, to bring back. We've learned how to place our mind and how to continue to place our mind, but occasionally a thought still breaks out like a wild horse galloping across the plains. In the first two stages this happened incessantly. By the third stage it happens only occasionally.
During the second stage, we learned to enjoy the ride. We're delighted that we can stay in the saddle and enjoy the scenery. In the third stage we become more confident. But the horse will have spontaneous moments of excitement and wildness. Now and then it rears or bucks or leaves the trail. We have to bring it back. We practice occasionally retrieving it throughout the third stage, and by the end we do it less and less. Our mindfulness is maturing into stability.
Now we're able to focus on our breathing, on being present. When the mind departs, it's usually to chase fantasies of little pleasures, from food to better weather to romantic adventures. This is elation: we're holding our mind too tightly. We're focused on the breath so hard that the mind suddenly departs. As this stage progresses, the speed and efficiency with which we retrieve our mind increases. By comparison, the way we extracted ourselves from thoughts in earlier stages looks messy. Sometimes it was like quicksand-the harder we tried to get out, the more we were embroiled. But now, because mindfulness is so strong, we're able to remove ourselves with precision. By the end of this stage we've achieved one of the milestones of shamatha: stability. Mindfulness is so potent that we're able to remain on the breath without ever being fully distracted. Awareness is also becoming more astute. We're beginning to catch thoughts before they occur.
Our meditation isn't as clear and vibrant as it could be, but it feels good and peaceful because we've stabilized our minds. Throughout the course of a session, our mind always remains in the theater of meditation. This is an admirable accomplishment. In Tibet it is likened to a vulture soaring high in the sky over a dead animal. This bird now always keeps its eye on the food. It may drift a little to the left or right, but it never loses sight of the food. Similarly our minds may drift here and there, but never away from the breath.
Before the end of the third stage, sometimes we were present for our practice and sometimes we weren't. Now we're there for all of it. This is stability. It didn't happen because we hit ourselves over the head with an overly simplified meditation technique. We achieved it gently and precisely through repetition, consistency, view, attitude, intention, proper posture and good surroundings.
Close Placement
The entry to the fourth stage, which is known as close placement, is marked by nondistraction. We always remain close to the breath. That's when we know we've crossed the border. This is stability. We know that even though the horse will wander here and there, it won't be leaving the trail.
Our meditation now takes on a different twist. Previously our main concern was not to be distracted from the breath. We were worried that our mind was going to be sucked back into everyday problems. We were always wondering if we'd be strong enough to return to the breath. Now we're more relaxed. We're no longer wondering if we can stay on the breath because we know we can. We're no longer concerned about outside influences pulling us away from meditation because we know they won't. Our confidence is heightened. Now we're concerned about the quality of our meditation-the texture, the experience. Before we were worried that we couldn't get a cup of coffee; now we want a mocha cappuccino. How can we make our minds stronger, more vibrant? This is our new priority.
By and large, we've overcome the obstacles of laziness and forgetting the instructions. These obstacles were bad because they kept us from meditating. By the end of the third stage and into the fourth stage we're dealing with the obstacles of elation and laxity. Either extreme has distracting results. However, since by now we're always remaining at the scene of our practice, these are considered good problems to have.
In Tibet we're warned that at the fourth stage we might be fool enough to think we've achieved enlightenment or high realization-the mind feels so strong and stable and good. Because the struggle with our mind has been reduced greatly, there's a quality of joy and ease. But if we enjoy the stability of the mind too much, it will become too relaxed. We might not reach the other stages. Hence the obstacle of laxity. Our mind is stable but not clear. The bird can't land on the meat; it can only fly around it. We need awareness to hone in, sharpen sensibility, pull our mind in tighter.
Taming
Even though the accomplishments at the third and fourth stages are heroic, there's further to go. In the fifth stage we're able to tighten up our meditation by bringing in more clarity. This stage is known as taming because we begin to experience the true fruits of a tamed mind, something that we began to cultivate long ago in the first stage. Taming here is the experience of lesu rungwa, being able to make our mind workable. In the fourth stage, we might still feel awed by the fact that we've tamed the horse. But now a strong, stable and clear mind feels natural. Our mind is not perfectly still. We still have discursive thoughts. But we're feeling true synergy with the horse. We're feeling harmony. We're no longer struggling.
The harmony and synergy create joy. A traditional metaphor for what we experience at this stage is the delight of a bee drawing nectar from a flower. Meditation tastes good, joyous. If you've ever had a hard time and then suddenly felt the pressure lift, you might have briefly known such bliss and liberation.
Pacifying
The sixth stage is known as pacifying. A great battle has taken place and there is victory. We're seated on the horse surveying the field. We know we've won. We feel tranquil and vibrant like mountain greenery after a thunderstorm. Everything has been watered and energized. There is tremendous clarity.
We're still working with a mind that is sometimes tight and sometimes loose. In our practice we still have to make many little adjustments. But in making these adjustments we're no longer frantic, as we might have been in the first few stages. Then it was questionable that we would ever make our mind an ally, and now the peace we feel tells us that we have. Our meditation is joyous and clear. We begin to experience not only mind's natural harmony, but also its inherent strength.
At this stage we also feel excitement. We begin to see the possibilities of what we can accomplish with our tamed mind. Before, this relationship was a burden, but now it's full of possibilities. The wild horse has been tamed.
Thoroughly Pacifying
The battle may be over, but there are still a few little enemy soldiers running around in the form of subtle thoughts, mostly about pleasure. We may be slightly attached to how good meditation feels. There are little dualistic rumblings. Although we know that they're not going to disrupt our meditation, we can't just sit back and ignore them. In thoroughly pacifying, we don't dispel the thoughts as we did in stage four. Now we seduce them, like snow falling into fire. Our meditation is becoming so strong that when thoughts and emotions encounter its heat they naturally dissolve.
Remember the waterfall of thoughts we felt when we first sat down on the cushion to tame our minds? It's become a lake with only a few little ripples.
One-Pointed
By the eighth stage, known as one-pointed, the remnants of discursiveness have evaporated. We're sitting there completely awake, clear and knowing. This is possible because we're no longer distracted. Our meditation has developed all the attributes of perfection, which is what we will accomplish at the ninth stage. The only difference is that at the beginning of meditation we still have to make a slight effort to point our mind in the direction of the breath.
Equanimity
Our meditation has come to perfection. When we sit down we engage with the breath in a completely fluid and spontaneous manner. Our mind is strong, stable, clear and joyous. We feel a complete sense of victory. We could meditate forever. Even in the back of our mind, there are no traces of thoughts. We're in union with the present moment. Our mind is at once peaceful and powerful, like a mountain. There's a sense of equanimity.
This is perfection. Like a finely trained racehorse, our mind remains motionless but alive with energy. The mind has actually grown-in strength as well as size. We feel magnanimous, expansive. This is the fruition of peaceful abiding. Now we have a mind that is able to focus in any endeavor. We feel centered and confident.
SAKYONG MIPHAM RINPOCHE is holder of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage established by his father, the late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Reprinted by arrangement with Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc., from Turning the Mind Into an Ally by Sakyong Mipham. 2003 by Mipham J. Mukpo.
From Shambhala Sun, March 2003.

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The Sharp Sword of Prajna
by Judy Lief

Mahayana is referred to as "the great vehicle" of Buddhism because it is vast and challenging and open to everyone. At the heart of the mahayana path are compassion and wisdom, or prajna. For the practitioner, the challenge is how to bring these two together.
Prajna is a Sanskrit word literally meaning "best knowledge," or "best knowing." Prajna is a natural bubbling up of curiosity, doubt and inquisitiveness. It is precise, but at the same time it is playful. The awakening of prajna applies to all aspects of life, down to the tiniest details. Our inquisitive interest encompasses all levels, from the most mundane, such as how do I turn on this computer, up to such profound levels as, what is the nature of reality?
Prajna is symbolized in many ways: as a book, a sun, a vase of elixir, as a catalytic spark. One of the main ways prajna is symbolized is as a sword. When you think of a sword, it may make you feel a little uncomfortable. A sword can be dangerous and if you do not handle it properly, you can get hurt. So depicting prajna as a sword points to knowledge that's threatening.
Why is prajna threatening? Because prajna is the means by which we perceive emptiness, or shunyata, it undermines our very notion of reality and the limits we place on our world view. Opening to the vastness and profundity of shunyata requires us to let go of our petty-mindedness and self-clinging completely.
Many sutras deal with the topic of prajna. One of the most beloved is the extremely concise and elegant exposition known as the Heart Sutra, which is recited daily by Buddhists of many traditions. In such famed and provocative phrases as, "No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind … no suffering, no origin of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path … no wisdom, no attainment, no nonattainment," the Heart Sutra, step by step, precisely and systematically-almost surgically-removes any and all barriers separating us from the vivid experience of shunyata.
The sharpness of prajna cuts at many levels. In the mundane sense, prajna represents a sharpening of perception and inquisitiveness. As we go about our lives, and particularly as we enter a spiritual path, we are always raising questions. We are always trying to understand. Instead of just accepting a superficial understanding, we think deeply and ask, "What do I really understand? Does any of this make any sense whatsoever?" Prajna has this quality of creative doubt-not just accepting things based on authority or hearsay, but continually digging deeper.
In addition to being sharp, swords have sharp points and they are able to puncture. The sharp-pointed sword of prajna punctures all sorts of delusions, all sorts of self-deception, all sorts of false understandings and false views. This puncturing quality of prajna is abrupt and immediate. It catches you by surprise. Perhaps you are a new practitioner exploring the dharma, studying these interesting new things and starting to practice meditation. Suddenly prajna sneaks up on you and you feel skewered. You are caught. Prajna has caught you in the act, whether it's the act of self-absorption, the act of being bloated, or the act of lying to yourself. Prajna is a lying-free zone. Whenever we try to remove ourselves from the present, immediate reality of things, we're setting ourselves up as a target for this puncturing quality of prajna.
You could say that prajna is a defense mechanism. If we keep bloating and bloating, at some point we are punctured by prajna and the whole thing collapses. That's good, but at the same time, this sharpness and puncturing quality can be seen as a threat. We are threatened by the possibility of being found out, but since prajna is our own inherent insight, who are we being found out by? By ourselves! It is not that someone else is going to say, "Oh, I know your number." Through prajna, deep down we actually know what's going on: we know our own number. To continue to fool ourselves takes effort. If we don't work to keep fooling ourselves, pretending that we don't really know what is going on, then sooner or later we are going to be skewered.
You could view all this as a bit of a warning: as soon as you enter the Buddhist path and start practicing meditation and studying the dharma, you are picking up this sword of prajna. Now that you have this sharp thing, this sword that skewers and cuts through ego trips of all sorts, you have to deal with it.
The sword of prajna has two sharp sides, not just one. It's a double-bladed sword, sharp on both sides, so when you make a stroke of prajna it cuts two ways. When you cut through deception, you are also cutting through the ego's taking credit for that. You're left nowhere, more or less.
The more mindfulness you develop, the more powerfully the sword of prajna cuts. Once you have this sword, it cuts every possibility of escape. But no one is doing this to you-it is your own intelligence, not some cosmic boogey man. The stroke of prajna is like hara-kiri. As you are holding the sword, you take your back stroke, getting ready to attack-and you find you've sliced yourself in two. Prajna never stops cutting. If you are pruning a plant, you can just say, "I'll just prune, prune, prune and then I'll have this little twig left over to grow back." But prajna keeps cutting and keeps cutting, so there's nothing left over, just this sword, slicing and slicing.
Prajna does not allow us to make a credential or ground out of anything. We could create credentials out of anything we do, including spirituality or the Buddhist tradition or the practice of meditation. We could use any of those things in our usual, conventional way of building credentials, building identity, trying to be special. We could say, "Now I'm a spiritual person who does blabbady-blah-blah." The response of prajna is, "Well, that's fine. You can say that, but you know that it doesn't hold a lot of water. You know that it's not all that solid." The sword of prajna cuts through our clinging to solid ground.
Another image for prajna is the sun: the sun of prajna is illuminating our world. If we're inquisitive, if we're attentive, a kind of natural illumination happens. There is light shining on the dark corners and a sense of being under the spotlight, totally exposed. What is funny is that we actually think we can hide. How could we think that? How could we think that we actually don't know who we are? But a lot of times we take the approach of not really wanting to look too closely at ourselves or at our lives. We just look the other way and move on. However, there's no corner where the sun of prajna isn't shining. Prajna is like having a sun shining all around, everywhere, never setting.
Once you open up to prajna, to this fundamental inquisitiveness, it tends to burst into full flame. It is like a little spark dropped into a pile of dry leaves. Once there is that little spark, that little bit of insight, that little bit of suspicion we actually know more than we think we do-it explodes, it's all consuming.
Prajna is represented iconographically by the feminine deity Prajnaparamita and the masculine deity Manjushri. Prajnaparamita is depicted as a beautiful feminine deity with four arms. Two arms are folded on her lap in the classic posture of meditation, and her two other arms hold a sword and a book. Through these gestures, she manifests three aspects of prajna: academic knowledge, cutting through deception, and direct perception of emptiness.
As the masculine deity personifying knowledge, Manjushri is also depicted holding a sword. Sometimes he also holds a vase filled with the elixir of knowledge, which symbolizes direct intuitive insight. The sword is the activity of prajna and the vase is the receptive aspect of learning. Sometimes Manjushri holds a book and a flower. The book symbolizes scholarly learning and the flower represents the organic unfolding of prajna, which like a flower, naturally opens and blossoms. It does not need to be forced.
Prajna has to do with cultivating inquisitiveness of mind, cultivating deep understanding that is not a mere credential but transforms who we are altogether. How can prajna be cultivated? The process of deepening our understanding is referred to as the three levels of prajna, or the three prajnas. These are called hearing, contemplating, and meditating.
The first prajna, hearing, is based on being open to new information, gathering knowledge, and really trying to listen. Although it is called hearing, in addition to listening with one's ears, it also includes reading and observing through all our senses. When you hear the dharma or listen to the teachings, you are supposed to be like a deer in the woods. You hear a noise-footsteps on leaves-and you don't know if that noise is a hunter or a mountain lion. At that moment your senses perk up completely. You are focused and ready to leap from danger, if need be. You are absolutely alert and absolutely tuned into the environment. That quality of refined alertness and attention is the quality of hearing. You need to listen to the teachings as though your life depended on it. That is the proper way to go about the first prajna.
However, at this point, we see knowledge as something that's separate from us, an object out there that we are trying to figure out how to deal with. To go deeper, we turn to the second prajna, contemplating. Once we've heard or read or experienced something, contemplation means really chewing it over. We continually question what we have heard, looking at it from different angles, taking time to explore it. I remember my teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, saying that if you really understand the teachings, you should be able to describe them to your grandmother in a way that she can hear it. That's pretty challenging-you can't just march in and lay out your cookie-cutter talk or your many layers of lists and terms. You have to have chewed things over and really thought it through. You need to get to the point where you can express the teachings in your own words, your own images. You need to find your voice, and that takes time. That is the idea of contemplation.
Studying the Buddhist teachings is not like going to school, where you take one course after another. In the Buddhist tradition, you take one or two things and you study them over and over and over. You take a topic and you come back to it and come back to it. You work with it your whole life. Over and over you come back to a few basic ideas, and each time there's a deepening of your understanding. The process of contemplation is a long-term relationship, like that of an old married couple. It does not happen quickly; it takes time.
The third prajna is called meditating. This is the point where you have studied something so thoroughly, looked into it so completely, that it's not separate from you anymore. It is part of who you are, down to your very bones and marrow. The prajna of meditation means that you have actually digested the teachings. There's no need to try to call the dharma down from somewhere, or make an effort to reconstruct it, because it's already there. It's in your cells and your DNA.
Hearing is like putting a morsel of food in your mouth. Contemplating is like swallowing that food and starting to digest it and seeing whether it gives you indigestion or not. Meditating is when you've already digested it and that food is a part of you. It cannot be separated from you; it is completely incorporated in your being. You have taken the essence and you've discarded anything that's irrelevant, the same as we do with the food we eat or the air we breathe. The whole process is as natural as eating.
Usually we think that knowledge means having all the answers, but the quality of prajna is more like having all the questions. The phrase Trungpa Rinpoche used over and over again was, "The question is the answer." We're looking in the wrong direction if we think some path or some teacher or some book or some practice is going to provide us with "the ultimate answer." What we really should be looking for is the ultimate question. We could learn to trust our questioning mind. We could learn to trust our insight without reducing it or pinning it down into our conventional categories. In fact, prajna can't be pigeonholed. That would be like trying to put the sun into a pigeonhole. It simply doesn't work.
What is this knowledge that can't be possessed, that we can't hold, that isn't our credentials, that isn't an object? What is this knowledge that seems to only appear when we're not trying to grasp it? What is that knowledge that seems to come from nowhere? What is this knowledge that is inspiring, but at the same time threatening? What is this knowledge that challenges us to recognize what we know but prefer to keep buried? What is this penetrating insight that leads us to the direct experience of emptiness?
Fundamentally prajna is big questioning mind. It is big questioning, not even mind.
Judy Lief is a senior teacher (acharya) of Shambhala Buddhism. She is the author of Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality.

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The Twelve Principles of Buddhism
Drafted by Christmas Humphreys, The Buddhist Society, London, in 1945

1. Self-salvation is for any man the immediate task. If a man lay wounded by a poisoned
arrow he would not delay extraction by demanding details of the man who shot it, or
the length and make of the arrow. There will be time for ever-increasing understanding
of the Teaching during the treading of the Way. Meanwhile, begin now by facing life
as it is, learning always by direct and personal experience.
2. The first fact of existence is the law of change or impermanence. All that exists, from
a mole to a mountain, from a thought to an empire, passes through the same cycle of
existence - i.e., birth, growth, decay and death. Life alone is continous, ever seeking
self-expression in new forms. 'Life is a bridge; therefore build no house on it.' Life is
a process of flow, and he who clings to any form, however splendid, will suffer by
resisting the flow.
3. The law of change applies equally to the 'soul'. There is no principle in an individual
which is immortal and unchanging. Only the 'Namelessness', the ultimate Reality, is
beyond change, and all forms of life, including man, are manifestations of this Reality.
No one owns the life which flows in him any more than the electric light bulb owns the
current which gives it light.
4. The universe is the expression of law. All effects have causes, and man's soul or
character is the sum total of his previous thoughts and acts. Karma, meaning
action-reaction, governs all reaction to them, his future condition, and his final
destiny. By right thought and action he can gradually purify his inner nature, and
so by self-realisation attain in time liberation from rebirth. The process covers great
periods of time, involving life after life on earth, but ultimately every form of life will
reach Enlightenment.
5. Life is one and indivisble, though its everchaning forms are innumerable and
perishable. There is, in truth, no death, though every form must die. From an
understanding of life's unity arises compassion, a sense of identity with the
life in other forms. Compassion is described as 'the Law of laws - eternal
harmony', and he who breaks this harmony of life will suffer accordingly and
delay his own Enlightenment.
6. Life being One, the interests of the part should be those of the whole. In his
ignorance man thinks he can successfully strive for his own interests, and this
wrongly directed energy of selfishness produces suffering. He learns from his
suffering to reduce and finally eliminate its cause. The Buddha taught Four
Noble Truths: (a) The omnipresence of suffering; (b) its cause, wrongly directed
desire; (c) its cure, the removal of the cause; and (d) Noble Eightfold Path of
self-development which leads to the end of suffering.
7. The Eightfold Path consists in Right (or perfect) Views or preliminary understanding,
Right Aims or Motive, Right Speech, Right Acts, Right Livelihood, Right Effort,
Right Concentration or mind development, and finally, Right Samadhi, leading to
Full Enligtenment. As Buddhism is a way of living, not merely a theory of life, the
treading of this Path is essential to self-deliverance. 'Cease to do evil, learn to do
good, cleanse your own heart: this is the Teaching of the Buddhas.'
8. Reality is indescribable, and a God with attributs is not the final Reality. But the
Buddha, a human being, became the All-Enlightened One, and the purpose of life
is the attainment of Enlightenment. This state of Consciousness, Nirvana, the
extinction of the limitations of self-hood, is attainable on earth. All men and all
other forms of life contain the potentiality of Enlightenment, and the process
therefore consists in becoming what you are. 'Look withtin: thou art Buddha.'
9. From potential to actual Enligtenment there lies the Middle Way, the Eightfold
Way 'from desire to peace', a process of self-development between the 'opposites',
avoiding all extremes. The Buddha trod this Way to the end, and the only faith
required in Buddhism is the reasonable belief that where a Guide has trodden it is
worth our while to tread. The Way must be trodden by the whole man, not merely
the best of him, and heart and mind must be developed equally. The Buddha was the
All-Compassionate as well as the All-Enlightened One.
10. Buddhism lays great stress on the need of inward concentration and meditation,
which leads in time to the development of the inner spiritual faculties. The subjective
life is as important as the daily round, and periods of quietude for inner activity are
essential for a balanced life. The Buddhist should at all times be 'mindful and
self-possessed', refraining from mental and emotional attachment to 'the passing
show'. This increasingly watchful attitude to circumstances, which he knows to be his
own creation, helps him to keep his reaction to it always under control.
11. The Buddha said: 'Work out your own salvation with diligence.' Buddhism knows
no authority for truth save the intuition of the individual, and that is authority for
himself alone. Each man suffers the consequences of his own acts, and learns
thereby, while helping his fellow men to the same deliverance; nor will prayer to
the Buddha or to any God prevent an effect from following its cause. Buddhist
monks are teachers and exemplars, and in no sense intermediates between Reality
and the individual. The utmost tolerance is practised towards all other religions and
philosophies, for no man has the right to interfere in his neighbour's journey to the
Goal.
12. Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor 'escapist', nor does it deny the existence of
God or soul, though it places its own meaning on these terms. It is, on the contrary,
a system of thought, a religion, a spiritual science and a way of life, which is
reasonable, practical, and all-embracing. For over two thousand years it has satisfied
the spiritual needs of nearly one-third of mankind. It appeals to the West because it
has no dogmas, satisfies the reason and the heart alike, insists on self-reliance
coupled with tolerance for other points of view, embraces science, religion, philosophy,
psychology, ethics and art, and points to man alone, as the creator of his present life
and sole designer of his destiny.

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This Life Which is Wonderful and Evanescent
By Blanche Hartman

"One of the Buddha's most significant teachings is impermanence. But actually that is just how things are-anything, anytime, anywhere. To live in harmony with this truth brings great happiness."
If you think about it, it's awesomely, amazingly wonderful just to be alive! It's a wonderful gift, and especially on a beautiful spring day like today. But it took me several years of meditation practice and a heart attack before I really got it that just to be alive is awesome. As I was walking out of the hospital I thought, "Wow! I could be dead. The rest of my life is just a gift." And then I thought, "Well, it always has been a gift from the very beginning and I never noticed it until it was almost gone."
I think it is true of many of us that we don't notice what a gift it is just to be alive. How could we not notice? Well, we sort of take it for granted. But this gift is not without its problems. One of these problems is actually the very thing that made me realize how awesome life is, what a gift it is and how much I appreciate it. That is the fact that life is evanescent, impermanent. It is precious because we can't just take it for granted. When we realize this, we may wonder, "Well, if my life is a gift, how shall I use it, how shall I give it back, how shall I express my appreciation for it, or completely live this life which is wonderful and evanescent?"
In Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Suzuki-roshi tells the story of the four horses. One of the horses starts to run just seeing the shadow of the whip, before it even touches him. The next one starts to run just having the whip touch the hair of its skin. The third horse starts to run when it really feels the pain of the whip on its skin. And the fourth horse doesn't really get going until it feels the whip in the marrow of its bones.
What is this whip? This whip is just that evanescence of life, just that teaching of impermanence. One of the Buddha's most significant teachings is to hold up impermanence for us to see, but actually it is just how things are-anything, anytime, anywhere. There is a Pali chant which expresses this:
All things are impermanent
They arise and they pass away.
To live in harmony with this truth
Brings great happiness.
If you see how things are, "things as-it-is" as Suzuki-roshi used to say, you see that they arise and they pass away. The trick is to live in harmony with the way things actually are; our suffering comes from wanting things to be different than they are.
I don't know why those of you who came today for the first time came. Why are you here at a Buddhist center? Why is anyone here? Why I'm here is that I began to notice that all things are impermanent, including myself. I came to practice the first time I almost died. The second time I almost died, I really came to recognize what a joy it is to be alive.
Maybe that's like the fourth horse. I didn't get it until it really got to the marrow. But maybe it's not so bad to be the fourth horse because when it gets to the marrow, you've got it through and through. You don't think, "Well, maybe just some things are impermanent, maybe, but not me. Maybe I'll live forever, or maybe whatever I love will live for ever, or maybe impermanence is not really the truth."
So we may try to bargain with impermanence or get into denial about it. But somehow, if we're lucky, we do come to understand "things-as-it-is" and that this is actually the life we are living. Then the question of how we live it becomes really urgent for us. It's not going to last forever; I just have a limited amount of time to live in a way that feels satisfying to me, that feels right, that feels in consonance with the way things are. "To live in harmony with this truth brings great happiness," the Pali chant says.
When I first came to Zen Center I heard Suzuki-roshi say, "Just to be alive is enough." That went right past me and it may be going right past you. I just put it out there so you can take a look at it and decide what it means to you. But I do think that we become curious about Zen practice or any kind of religious discipline when we begin to run into some of the difficulties of life and the question of how to live with those difficulties becomes a direct issue for us. Or we may notice that how we are living doesn't feel quite right. Or that the familiar fixed ideas we have don't seem to hold up on closer examination.
The chant that we do at the beginning of lectures says:
An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma
Is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas.
Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept,
I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagatha's words.
Notice that it doesn't say that an unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rare. That is just the truth of things-as-it-is and it is always in front of you every moment of your life. It is right here, nowhere else.
The chant ends, "I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagatha's words." This is a vow to taste the truth of how things really are, a vow to see directly. Taste is a very intimate sense-you get it right on your tongue, right here in your body. That is what my heart attack did for me; I got it right up close and personal. And each of us has some experience in our own life where the way things are is tasted directly, personally, right here. And that changes our life. We look at our life and we say, "This life is not in harmony with the way things are. That's why I'm always uncomfortable. So how do I bring myself into harmony with the actuality of this life?"
The Zen teacher Kobun Chino once said in a sesshin talk that when you realize how precious your life is, and that it is completely your responsibility how you manifest it and how you live it, that is such a big responsibility that "such a person sits down for a while"! He continued, "It is not an intended action, it is a natural action."
Some of you came here today for meditation instruction, for zazen instruction, for instruction in how to just sit. Now, why do you need instruction in how to just sit?
There was a wonderful young Danish man who came to Tassajara in the early days. He arrived at the gate and he said, "I want to come in and be a Zen monk." The person he was speaking to asked him, "Have you ever sat?" English was not his native language so he kind of took the question in and considered it for a bit, looking perplexed. Finally he drew himself up to his full height and he said, "All men have sat!"
So, why would you need to have instruction in just sitting? Well, just sitting doesn't mean merely sitting. It means completely sitting; not doing anything else, just sitting. You may have noticed that when you sit down intending to just sit, there is a lot going on! We don't really notice how active our mind is until we sit still with the intention of not deliberately thinking. Even though we are not deliberately thinking, a lot of thinking is going on! I had no idea how completely, incessantly busily active my mind was until I sat down with the intention of just being still and just being quiet and not grasping the thoughts that came along.
So one of the reasons we need instruction in how to just sit is that we need to know what might support us in letting some of that busyness just go along, without grabbing on to it. Something like paying attention to posture and paying attention to breath. Paying attention to what's happening right here and right now, which is this physical body, whatever sensations there might be, and breathing.
Most of the stuff that is going on in our mind is not about what is happening right here and right now. Check it out sometime and see: most of the stuff that is going on in your mind is either chasing after the past or chasing after the future. Or worrying about the future and regretting or chewing over the past incessantly. And figuring out who to blame for all our difficulties. It takes a long time to realize that there is no one to blame and to be willing just to be here.
I was invited recently to participate in a spirituality discussion group. My friend said the group was going to be giving attention to what we do in situations where there has been some real loss, where things are never going to be the same again. Someone you know and love has died; you have had a serious illness or an accident. Something has occurred that feels like a terrible loss that can't be recovered. How do you work with those circumstances?
Some of the people there had experienced losses which they could relate to the question, but the discussion was really about how our lives were going now and about how to arrive at a sense of ease or a feeling of composure in our lives. One person said, "Things are going pretty well for me now, but I just noticed today that even though everything is fine I have this kind of worried uneasiness, not about anything in particular, and it seems strange when everything is going fine."
The teaching that there is suffering in the midst of joy was right there in what he was saying-the worried uneasiness that although everything is fine now, something might happen and it won't be fine. Have any of you ever had that kind of experience? It is a very common human experience.
We have all kinds of ways of imagining the future that distract us from actually living in the present. What just sitting, what zazen is really about, is living in the present so that we can actually manifest this precious life in a way that feels right, a way that is consonant with our inner understanding of the dharma, of the truth. Shortly before he died, William Butler Yeats said, "If I had to put it in a single phrase, I would say that one can live the truth but one can really not know the truth, and I must express the truth with the remainder of my life." I can live the truth but cannot know it, and I must express it with the remainder of my life.
Dogen Zenji, the Japanese founder of this particular stream of Zen, said this about the precept "I vow not to disparage the Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha)": "To expound the dharma with this body is foremost. Its virtue returns to the ocean of reality. It is unfathomable. We just accept it with respect and gratitude." It is unfathomable. We cannot know it. The inconceivable really is inconceivable! But we still try to find a way to grab onto it.
In his lecture in the San Francisco Zen Center's "Buddhism at the Millennium's Edge" series, Stephen Batchelor was talking about a willingness to live in perplexity, a willingness to live in the realm of not knowing. This is quite difficult. We can expound the dharma with this body, we can live the truth; we just can't grasp it. We can feel in our body when we are out of line with it. That is why Kobun Chino says it is such a big responsibility that naturally a person sits down for a while. We want to attune ourselves carefully to our body and mind so that we can notice when we are out of line with our deepest intention. We want to cultivate that intimate knowing without words and ideas-an intimacy with ourself-so that we can tell if we are living our life the way we really want to or whether it is just a little off.
We can do this by just tuning in with ourself, with our fundamental human nature, which is sometimes in Buddhism called buddhanature. Suzuki-roshi says a human being practicing true human nature is our zazen. Buddhanature is not something mysterious or arcane. Buddha just means awake; one who is awake. We find out how to be awake and to align ourselves with our true intention, with our true being, with the wisdom and compassion that is already inherent in each being, including ourself. No one is the one single exception to the fact that all beings are Buddha. We are not that special!

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Thoughts about Consciousness while Cutting in the Brain


Neurosurgeon Werner Doyle changes people's experience of life for the better by removing parts of their brains. Yet he knows that mind is not matter, cells are not consciousness. Novelist Joseph McElroy watches Doyle at work in the operating room, and together they ponder the mystery of brain and mind.
We heal.

Not always, but often. We heal ourselves and are helped to do so, and we help others, and more than help. And often hardly know how it happens, though we have all this knowledge, some of which accumulates and grows and helps, not entirely predictably and often immeasurably. I know no more profound kind of medical intervention than the brain surgery that aims to do away with epileptic seizures, at the very least reduce their frequency, control them, give the patient, often young, a life. I am speaking of epilepsy on which drugs haven't worked. In Dostoevsky's day there were no effective drugs to prevent seizures-perhaps he took bromides. Treatment was speculative at best. In a letter of 1863 he complains that he got only contradictory advice from specialists in Paris and Berlin; in Russia there were no epilepsy specialists at all. The "flash of light in his brain," "of lightning," coming in the midst of "spiritual darkness" a minute before the epileptic fit-"the sense of life, the consciousness of self…multiplied ten times," are fascinating as literature, but for the sufferer they are "nothing but disease" (The Idiot, 1869).

For epilepsy that drugs can't control, we now have, and have had for half a century, a remarkable range of surgical procedures. They are not without risk, even now with all the MRI's, the rest of the changing technology, and the teamwork between epileptologists and neuropsychologists helping to prepare for the operations which the neurosurgeon-with all the technical data and irreplaceable experience and I would say meditative concentration-will perform. Remarkable, too, because within the confines of our three-dimensionally mapped and thus not unfamiliar brain, and doubtless inseparable from it, exist the limitless-seeming space, unthinkably quick paths of branching activity, and power we call consciousness.

That is also what I sometimes imagine I'm looking at when I'm standing in an operating room at NYU Medical Center for hours. What I'm this close to. And may even speak of out loud. For the man I am watching do his work, Dr. Werner Doyle, has encouraged me to speak, to ask, to say I hardly know what, or, curiously, what is in and of, but somehow other, if not separate. For Aristotle, body is both different from and inseparable from what he calls "soul" (anima), which is the actual life of something that possesses the potential for life. A section of brain surgically removed loses that life.

I am so close physically to an exposed site of someone's consciousness, though it is only approachable through the signs and languages by which we manifest it, not by looking at a brain. Several years ago, after a conversation in which I had expressed some interest in learning about his work but had not mentioned that I'd written a novel about a brain, Werner invited me to observe his surgery. He was at another hospital then. I was struck by some conjunction of what can be repaired and yet remains virtually imponderable. We make use of what we can know in a region that contains what we do not know. I saw several operations and I filled half a notebook with what Werner told me and what I saw, or thought I saw. And events took over, and I wrote something else. And waited, I know, for a way to write about what Werner does.

Then in February of this year we happened to meet, and the way came to me, as I shall try to explain. And that is why, if I may speak in the present tense, I am here in this O.R. on a day in April. I'm this close. But to what? What pale cellular substance, what electrochemical reality, what potential seizures, feelings, perceptions, darknesses? For at the moment, the anesthetized patient is almost certainly without what we could call consciousness. Yet it will come back. From where? one may ask.

The spectacle of the operating room is pretty routine nowadays, if you count your home TV screen tuned to "ER" as providing an encounter this close. Yet this-the four or five assistants each with a job, and the anesthesiologist sitting surrounded by equipment and near the arm of the sleeping patient, who from where I stand is completely covered by a blue tent except for this small, exposed, brightly lighted opening into an area on the left side of her brain, where the surgeon, who I think is aware of everything in the room, is going to remove a section-all this is not primarily dramatic. It is work. It is attention. It is in many respects like other operations, like much that has been done before (except I, too, am here, in scrubs); and it does not pretend that this is not so.

It is not even an emergency, Werner has observed when we were talking in his office. You think, nonetheless, of what turns upon every move he makes here with his instruments. With a suction device the slow releasing of the perimeter of the brain matter he wants to take out in one piece; en bloc is the term. Retractor forceps holding back the skin. Lower fibrous layers of dura held back by being tacked and then sutured so they don't slip under the skin. Little bursts of steam-like smoke from a bipolar forceps used to cauterize areas of potential bleeding and operated by pedal. Electrodes seemingly printed on tiny strips inserted on certain areas of brain tissue during a previous operation after which, the wires emerging from the head with locations labeled, and the incision very carefully sewn shut and the patient returned to her bed on another floor, the electrodes will identify where subsequent seizures are coming from. Now in this second operation, the surgeon knows pretty well where he needs to section. He glances quickly back to the hand-sketched diagrammatic sector maps of numbered brain points scotch-taped to the glass wall behind me, and at the video monitor on a table at my elbow with the virtual patient MRI on the screen (a device with software Werner Doyle developed).

What can go wrong? Get too close to memory areas, to motor function where infinitesimal damage could paralyze facial muscles, arms, legs. Sometimes Werner will do an awake operation to get the patient's response to stimulus at particular points. The work is more and more my focus, I'm with Werner, and when sometimes the back of this person who's working three or four feet in front of me gets in the way and blocks my view, I can move around him, or I can check out three video screens strategically placed above us trained on the wound, the window on which, in which, this surgeon works, his extremely lean body rather concave-seeming, his movements quick, his bird-like hovering above the terrain of his work, quick, yet delicately slow, a workman. To be able to move freely around the O.R. is a strange privilege I mostly forget, though I mustn't get in anybody's way, trip over a cable, bump a table on wheels, touch a piece of paper with one of Werner's little maps on it with my ungloved hands. The surgeon answers my question: this is probably a three-stage case-electrodes are going to be left in; sometimes you go less far than you otherwise might for caution's sake; sometimes secondary epileptic regions are (as Werner says in an abstract for a neurosurgery journal) "expressed only after the primary focus is resected" (i.e. removed). You can take brain material out but you can't put it back in. Transplants not yet possible here; in any case less will be more.

I feel like I'm falling, but forward, wondering why I got into this. Am I understanding enough? For some reason I'm recalling the pretext for this neurosurgery piece-what Werner told me in February, this neighborhood friendly acquaintance father husband scientist doctor, who passed through a dark period himself.

I ask if the patient is experiencing any consciousness under anesthesia. No, nothing. One of the O.R. nurses asks the question again, as if my speaking has introduced a possibility of instruction or conversation to these proceedings. No, no sense of time passed. Nothing like Buddhist emptying of mind, I tell myself to bring up later-more like death as Lucretius so lucidly and calmly imagined it. We have discussed consciousness more than once-that emergent phenomenon whose sources and nature very little is known about and which, like mathematics (as Werner has pointed out), can't quite explain itself. Consciousness has become a huge sub-science but also rich philosophical ground in the past twenty years, its terms somewhat upstaging the old, no less profound body-mind problems not resolved either by Descartes' attempt to locate where the separately distinct mind or soul links up with the body, or by the seductive religious paradoxes of Pascal-most famously, "The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know." And I ask here in the O.R., with the patient's brain opened before us, what Werner thinks of the theories of Francis Crick and Christof Koch that would reduce the organizing of consciousness-and its products-to certain neural correlates, and as one may understand how sight occurs so locate also where Will is situated, or the highlighted illusion of its resultant decisions minus (conveniently) the memory of automatic computations that led to them. Doesn't this reduce one neural source of consciousness to its essence? I ask, knowing that static "essence" isn't quite the word. Werner agrees. For him the brain is holistic-Buddhism agrees, I interrupt-it develops as part of the whole organism, Werner continues; and he has seen too many examples of unpredictable or even unknown connectings, of surprising resilience, to say nothing of one part remarkably taking over for another.

So the process may not be simply reducible to certain neural correlates; the generative sources multiply. Which is not to dismiss Aristotle's patient conclusions about soul- (or mind-) body relations in his fourth-century bce lectures recorded in the notes of students and edited three centuries later. Nor, doubtless influenced by Aristotle, the propositions of Spinoza in the seventeenth century, who thought mind and body parallel attributes of one substance and from this derived an ethos of the emotions very like what Buddhism teaches.

I want to ask if Werner agrees with a Buddhist view that consciousness is disorder-the monkey at the whim of impulse, a phantasmagoria of perception, a clutter which meditation, if we concentrate well enough, may fortunately dissolve; because that seems to nullify so much of my thinking, or anyway it seems too simple, a reduction of the brain/mind's plans, struggles, purposes, insight into tragedy, comedy, courage, idea, to say nothing of its use of memory, without which Samuel Johnson argued the mind is not engaged. For a second Werner, as if he's heard my thought, turns in my direction. I see the eyes behind the goggles, I know the face behind the mask; I don't need to look at him but at his work. He is suctioning carefully, cutting, cauterizing, determined to remove a small section of brain where he knows seizures have originated. And then it comes out, a pale, amorphous cube of spongy, damp material held up on the end of long, tweezer-like bayonet forceps and deposited in a labeled plastic container provided by a nurse.

How did we get to Buddhism? Werner brought it up in February-or did he? We were speaking of Iraq. He mentioned that he'd been through a critical depression a few years ago. Just like that. News to me. How had it affected his work? Not much. (Which sounds like Werner.) I wondered if that could be true. I supposed he meant the quality of his professional work. I wondered if this rough period had come out of nowhere. His life had taken a turn into depression. Into darkness, it seemed; into emptiness. Are these the right words? They're his. His wife confirmed it. I had known him for several years since this period (though not well), and he had never mentioned it. He's a friendly man, inherently but not obviously reserved; smiling, but not a party person; but a most interesting talker, widely informed, a generous polymath. We were off, but where were we going? What specific weight or momentum was I in the midst of? The desperate political situation wasn't what we were really talking about. The subject matter not unusual for New York, or for Werner. Our threatened society, physics, the vastness of space and time that surrounds us; the scale and process of black holes, and somewhere in this flurry of talk, the interest some Buddhist thinkers take in science-the Dalai Lama's discussions with Varela, Davidson, I put in (recalling that Varela worked at NYU in '78 and '79 and did important work on the prediction of seizures); and now we're speaking in that shared, synoptic way about 9/11. Though that must have been later than the depressions, I said, trying to keep track. (We both live a few blocks from the former World Trade Center. Had I talked to Werner since 9/11?) It had made him, like me, rediscover where he and his family were. I had written an essay about its impact on our neighborhood, though ultimately on what you make of your experience, a family person living in Tribeca or a terrorist flying a plane into a building.

I think I have a way to write about what Werner does. Seems OK to him; we'll be in touch. In response to my respect, he makes some compliment-I forget the words: writing a novel and all that that entails. Writing is always somewhere in my head, but not always as writing. Often as memory. More often as what happens to memory. Long ago I gave Werner a book of mine, and he mentioned a slight dyslexia he once upon a time thought he had. I made a bad joke about the left and right sides of…But now my epilepsy notebook comes back to me. What's in it? Things Werner told me. What actually happens in the brain in a generalized seizure, i.e. on both sides? A lessening or dissolving of difference, a terrible, crashing mobilizing into stunning synchrony of the brain's normal elaborate choreography, turned suddenly into this lockstep of breaking waves, some wriggling animal inside your head. One evening after a long day-three operations, "very minor," the replacement of batteries in stimulators permanently implanted-Werner gets home late and phones and comes over. He mentions a boy he will operate on two days from now: a brain lesion, maybe a tumor, maybe developmental; he's had as many as twelve seizures a day. Werner wants to talk. He is a little like Chaucer's ecclesiastical student in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales: "gladly would he learn and gladly teach." Two New York guys, Irish it occurs to me, finding a late-night moment to talk about anything. Meditation comes into it. Neither of us seems to meditate in a regular way, but I'm not sure. I wouldn't say I meditate. Werner thinks you can meditate while you're out walking, sometimes even at work. I see him operating on a sleeping patient. Werner gets to the hospital before 7 am and often isn't home till the middle of the evening. He tends not to eat between surgeries. I bring up depression, his.

It was when he would come home at night to his family that it descended, spreading the totality of its unanswerable pressure upon him. I wondered if it was due to work. No, it wasn't work. What did he do about it? I ask. He prescribed Prozac for himself and it made him feel better. He took it in the morning. Didn't it interfere with his concentration operating? Not at all. But the depression…It went on and eventually he came through it and everything's better now. He used to play music during surgery; no more.

Wait, I'm losing my way, I say to myself; I need to know how things happen. What did Werner come through to? It was when he came home at night?

Yes, he had always been a problem solver-from math, which he could get A's in but never felt he deeply understood, to computer software, to physics and organic chem and then biology. And general surgery, which interested him less than neuro surgery; and then a Yale fellowship in 1991, which almost by chance drew him into epilepsy surgery. He saw his work, his life, his family, as projects he would understand and deal with at a certain clear, engaged distance. Passing through painful depression seemed at last to dissolve that distance, that separation, between himself and what he had approached in order to solve as problems. He came to a new view. He was part of, not separate from, what he would live with, not just control.

The embrace of this view, as I hear Werner state it, is real and it is mysterious. A turn not simple to chart. Something in the words I grasp but don't get. Work you partly do on yourself.

I can come to surgery any time I like, though schedules aren't written in stone. I have a bunch of cellphone numbers for the office, the hospital-Ed Rivera, Werner's longtime assistant, who takes me to the men's locker room and I change. And at other times Werner and I talk in his office. Career details. He'd always had insomnia from the time he was at Columbia Medical School and before. He actually liked not sleeping. Insomnia is a drug, Werner grants. That period of depression stands between us as a subject: there but done with. The poet Rilke speaks of these dark periods as necessary to be gone through, not drowned out; as solitudes dizzying with "an abandonment to something inexpressible [that] would almost annihilate" you, where "all distances…change," and to explain the state of our senses the brain would have to invent "a monstrous lie…" I think often of what Buddhism has to say about displacing destructive emotions with a different focus. Good advice. Best thing to do with good advice is pass it on, Oscar Wilde quipped. At the time of the depressions, Werner's wife, Janet Standard, a psychiatric nurse now completing her studies to be a therapist, objected that Prozac wasn't what Werner needed.

In further talks pivotal for my sense of him, probably I wouldn't get all I wanted, not hear the whole story. If there is one. I wouldn't hear about-if they had occurred-moments of recovery, of vision, after which the craftsman who fixes brains, the explorer who doubtless clarifies consciousness the signs of which are only to be guessed at, finds himself again. Rilke sees our development moving "gradually-that nothing strange should befall us, but only that which has long belonged to us." I'm a writer. I experience doubt and distrust and I get over it, or even write about it. It's a pitfall of perception, of choice, of working transiently with others. There came a moment when I thought, Does this man, who I think is becoming my friend, really want me to write about him? He's not always sure. He has a right to be unsure. It is perhaps his way of being open, modest. Writing can move around in time, friendship too. This piece of writing will get done on time, seeing into the present as if it were a future beyond its deadline. Words, words; yet things get communicated. We're in Werner's office again, in a few minutes he's going to see patients in the consulting rooms.

"My brain is the same as theirs." A democracy of brains? But Werner has patients who were born with disabled brains from which he has removed as much as a whole hemisphere. "What do you"-I'm saying it awkwardly-"want to leave, or have done, when you retire?" Retire? No of course not at forty-eight, but would it be…an invention like the virtual patient software?

No, it's…he thinks all this hi-tech's beside the point sometimes, though technology is neutral; it's what you do with it. I reply that that's what Veblen thought. Werner says he could go into a low-tech situation in a developing country and work there. I mention that eighty percent of epileptics in developing countries, where the stigma is worst, have no access to medication. Werner thinks ancient doctors succeeded with what they had. Herbs, psychotherapy. "I got into this because I liked helping people." "I know you did." "That wasn't the only reason," he hastens to add. "It was science, problem-solving. You can manipulate the environment." Chemistry, physics, and at med school, biology. He wasn't happy at Columbia. Half the students were Ivy League. He was depressed there. Depressed? I ask. He tells me how later he did a rotation in neurosurgery, and a two-year general surgery, and then at NYU general neurosurgery before he got into this. I ask if epileptics get depressed. Oh yes. Same drugs for both. Probably some connection there, Werner thinks. "My life is no different from anyone else's. My brain is their brain. I'm living in my self." The only option. What one is capable of doing to expand this virtual reality that connects all of us.

I ask if it feels weird that I'm writing about him for a Buddhist magazine. "No, it makes complete sense." I the writer (with a 3 x 5 card and a ballpoint like a probe) don't pin him down; I know he reads in Buddhism, I don't know what. Janet has meditated for years. "I'm already dead," I hear him say. He says he says it to practice being this way-why not allow yourself to feel OK about it, and then get on with really living the fleeting moments that are left. If one were dead, how important is so much of what we value? He feels it more and more. The intrinsic value of something is what he's interested in, what's "best understood as irrelevant to my being alive."

I mention, with mixed feelings, Chogyam Trungpa on the subtle defenses of ego. I a long-lapsed Christian touched by the practice, psycho-medical tradition and humor in Buddhism, and a secular everyday bond I can't quite name. My fourteen-year-old son Boone had a sudden seizure when he was three. The terrifying absence in his eyes; he was gone, I thought. His mother holding him. Me in the street flagging down a car, a cab, though then the ambulance came; the terrible absence in his eyes, an emptiness, an emptying out, of I hardly dared think what. Seizures went on occurring in the hospital: he called it "a snake in my brain." The neurologist's word for this injury or trauma is "insult." By then we had passed through the initial onset. His courage, his young life. But at the end of a week in the hospital the seizures were diagnosed as his immune system's over-active, over-systematic counter-attack against a virus. The seizures were real; the cause was not epilepsy, not even what is called childhood epilepsy, which may pass. Though he remained on the drug Dilantin for several weeks.

On the way out of the office I see, framed on the left side of the door, the Tibetan Doctor's Prayer a patient gave Werner, and fleetingly I note one small part: "May all human beings interrelate fully, lovingly, compassionately and joyously with one another." Werner and I are not much on reincarnation. Yet it seems to him associated with the multiplying effects of karma-an extended life of our actions-in turn associated with an astonishing branching growth of complexity due to what is called in current theory-e.g., Stephen Wolfram's which we've both dipped into-sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

I see Werner operating on sleeping patients, their breathing of interest to him and to me as bridge between voluntary and involuntary. I hear him as he enters consulting rooms asking if the patient and the patient's family mind my sitting in; explaining in one room why a painful section of skull put back after an operation isn't sitting as snugly as it should but probably will; and in another why he favors a more "aggressive" second operation which will remove more brain, yet yield more life. Not easy, though, for the families to face. He is so good with them, the way he explains it all, the percentage of risk, five percent I've heard him say. Sometimes there's a pause in the conversation: he is simply with them. He puts an MRI up on the wall, he shows where we are going. He is like the seventeenth-century "physicians" attending John Donne sick in bed who "by their love are grown cosmographers." Where love means utmost attention, and the patient is a little world to be read as an explorer reads a map. "You'll be the same person when you wake up after the operation," Werner says to his patients. He says to me (his pronoun mysterious), "It's a way to understand it and bridge it to interact with someone else's virtual reality by surgery"-to have an effect on their "external milieu. …Not their brain only that's influencing me; it's something else."

I ask Alyson Silverberg, a nurse practitioner who has worked with him for seventeen years, what Werner Doyle does. "He is the most compassionate surgeon I've ever known," she replies. Does becomes is. Perhaps as heal is cognate with whole; as well as with, though I am not competent to speak of them, holy and sacred.

Once more in the operating room, I see a tumor removed, not uncommon for seizure patients. At the end, the suturing and stitching seem endless. Making sure to seal the wound. Though depending greatly on the patient's immune system to prevent infection. Werner turns to me at the end. "It's simple." Sometimes experience seems a privilege. ©
Thoughts About Consciousness while Cutting in the Brain by Joseph McElroy, Shambhala Sun, September 2004.

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When the Dharma Gets Personal
by Judy Lief

Since the time I first encountered the dharma, I have found that my most intimate personal relationships-with my teacher, my husband, my parents and my children-have been my most powerful teachers. In books, Buddhism can seem abstract and coldly rational. My experience is that relationships, not words, are the basis of the Buddhist journey.

In a discussion of spirituality with a group of formerly homeless people, one of the participants put forth this view most eloquently, saying, "What spirituality means to me is my relationship with all living things." We are within a web of relationships from the moment we are born, and even in solitary retreat we carry our pattern of relationships with us. Of all these relationships, the most provocative and transformative in my own life has been my relationship with my teacher.

When I met Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche I had not read a single book he had written and my knowledge of Buddhism was rather thin. I have virtually no memory of the content of the first talk I heard. It was not what Trungpa Rinpoche said but how he was that I noticed. When a grasshopper jumped on to his hand in the middle of his presentation, rather than shooing it away or even being startled, he broke into a smile. He took a real interest in the grasshopper and examined it slowly and carefully. After some time it flew away and he proceeded with his talk. During the course of the weekend, I noticed that same quality of delight, interest and presence in all his interactions.

Trungpa Rinpoche was continually creating relationships, constantly interfacing with the people around him. These personal encounters-whether the briefest of interactions, friendly socializing or love affairs-inspired many students to begin to practice and study the dharma. Through these many and varied interactions, Trungpa Rinpoche was able to teach the dharma in accord with the style and understanding of each individual student.

It was my personal connection with Trungpa Rinpoche that inspired me to become a dharma practitioner. No amount of study, no amount of reading, could have changed my life in the same way as meeting Trungpa Rinpoche did. A few weeks after I met him, I packed up all my books and put them on the sidewalk outside Hunter College with a big sign on them: "Free Books!" They were snatched up by happy students within minutes. Shortly after, I dropped out of graduate school and moved to Boulder to be closer to my teacher, to deepen my understanding of Buddhism and to enter more fully into the path of meditation. At the time, that decision seemed completely choiceless, a no-brainer, obvious. I had met a teacher I trusted and respected and I longed to connect further. I did not hesitate.

It is risky to enter into any relationship, and there are many good reasons we should think twice. Yet in many spiritual traditions it is thought that genuine teachers should connect directly with their students, heart to heart, that they should love their students without holding back. If a teacher really cares about students as friends, if there is a heart connection and if the students truly trust and love their teacher, that mutual trust creates an atmosphere ripe for teaching and ripe for absorbing the dharma.

The Tibetan tradition is filled with examples of powerful spiritual relationships, and pivotal encounters between practitioners and people they meet along the path-friends, lovers, teachers and even strangers. In the sutras, the teachings are conveyed dynamically, in the form of dialogues between the Buddha and his students. The teachings of the Buddha are transmitted in the meeting of a particular group of students with a particular teacher in a particular setting. And all along the path, as students ripen and mature in their understanding, they are provoked, guided, inspired and awakened by the personal encounters they have along the way. Countless intimate moments coax practitioners to dare to go forward on their journey. Whether a practitioner encounters reality directly in the form of a teacher or through someone else, a relationship is established and the practitioner is drawn out of himself or herself-at times gently and at times abruptly. Relationships bring the dharma from the head to the heart, from the theoretical realm of ideas to the reality of how we actually deal with one another as human beings. The dharma gets personal.

The image of student and teacher as lovers has appeared over and over again in many different cultures. The student as lover seeks out and seduces the teacher, the beloved, to transmit her or his knowledge and understanding. A good student seeks out the teachings as a bee seeks nectar. Likewise, when a teacher meets students who are ripe to learn, he or she does not hesitate to engage them fully and connect with them directly. The teacher is willing to fall in love with his or her students, to enter into their world completely.

At the level of the heart connection, mutual passion links the teacher and disciple. The heat of passion, the warmth of affection, links the teacher and student even when they are physically far apart. If they are in the same room, a mere glance may ignite this connection, and when they are apart, it is as if they were joined by a golden thread. In Tibetan iconography, this relationship is shown in a hidden way through symbols. For instance, a deity may embrace a staff, symbolizing that deity's continual union with his or her consort. Symbolically, one's lover is always with one.

Subtler still is the mind connection. At this level there is a complete mixing of minds between guru and student. Both are completely open, with no filtering, no resistance, no hesitation. Therefore the teachings can be conveyed in an unsullied way, without the need for words or gestures. The dharma does not need to be dressed up; it is the naked truth. In Tibetan iconography, physical nakedness symbolizes this naked unbounded state of mind. Here the meeting of guru and student is immediate and at the same time complete. There is absolutely no need for embellishment.

The guru-student connection sets an example for how we might work with our other relationships in such a way that instead of serving as entertainment or distraction, they push us or pull us to awaken. The relation of teacher and student can serve as the starting point for developing greater heartfulness, openness of mind and awareness in all our important relationships.

The Buddha set out on his own spiritual search alone, having abandoned his family and left behind his familiar world. He dropped the trappings of wealth and privilege and set off as a nobody, not as a prince with his retinue. Having escaped from the protected cocoon of courtly life, the Buddha replaced his old lifestyle with a new one, that of the wandering yogi. He entered into a period of intensive study and rigorous practice, working with a variety of leading teachers. In the end, when he had completed his studies, the Buddha reconnected with his own family and friends and established relationships with countless people throughout the region, both male and female, powerful and weak, of all castes and classes. He had discovered a middle way, free from attachment to either worldly or spiritual identity. And from this open ground, he taught and reached out to all sorts of people throughout his life.

Trungpa Rinpoche said, "In any nontheistic approach to spiritual discipline, you have to give up your home life to begin with. You have to go to a desert, or to a monastery, a nunnery or an abbey. You have to go to all kinds of places. That suggests giving up home, giving up parental figures. That is the first step of the nontheistic approach."

But this step of leaving home and giving up parental figures does not mean rejecting your parents or avoiding relationships. Leaving home does not mean simply replacing one home with another, or an old set of friends with a new set of friends. It is about letting go of our habitual attachments and expectations.

Many of our relationships are burdened by expectations, desires, hidden fears and unquestioned assumptions. The possibilities are endless. Some of us want to be taken care of; we seem to be in a perpetual search for the perfect parent. Some of us want to be in control; we seek out those we can overpower. Some of us feel empty; we seek to gather in friends to cure our loneliness. Some of us don't want to be bothered or hassled; we want to be left alone. Maybe we have been hurt, so we don't want to get involved and let ourselves be hurt again.

In order to loosen the hold of such patterns, first we need to see them clearly. In relating with the teacher, we try one stratagem after another, hoping that something will stick. But we find that nothing works-that a genuine relationship is not about strategy or trying to make something happen, or about gaining approval or avoiding disapproval. Relating with a teacher is provocative because it exposes our own particular neurotic patterns and mirrors them back to us.

Usually if two people are relating, both are contributing their own projections and distortions and it is very hard to see past that. But when you relate to a teacher, your own distortions stand out with great clarity. The teacher embodies openness, freedom and sanity, as opposed to self-protectiveness, fear and fixation. As such, the teacher serves to heighten the contrast between loving relationships that entrap us and love that draws us out of ourselves on to the path of awakening.

Letting go of our projections and preconceptions, we find ourselves in relationships that are open and uncapturable. This can feel incredibly fresh or incredibly intimidating or both at once. Any notion that our relationship has to be a certain way, in accord with our wishes rather than the way that it actually is, falls away. What is left is raw and direct. We are left with our heart exposed and nowhere particularly to go. There is very little to hang on to, neither a solid sense of who we are nor who the other person is. There is nothing to figure out.

This open ground is the home to which we return. And from this ground we can see people with new appreciation. This shows up in so many ways. Sometimes even a slight loosening of the many ideas and assumptions we have about those we care for opens us to qualities in them we never noticed. We tend to diminish ourselves and others tremendously, and it is very hard to take a fresh look.

The journey of leaving home-examining our patterns, dropping them and returning to open ground-is what I see as the journey of relationships. I used to think that I should try to develop some more perfect way of relating, one that would involve no pain. Compared to this ideal, my actual relationships could not measure up. However, through the teacher-student relationship, I discovered that underlying every relationship is the experience of open ground, free from attachment or rejection, where such measurements are irrelevant.

Acharya Judy Lief is the author of Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality. Her immediate relationships include her husband Chuck, her two daughters, Jessica and Deborah, and her dog Jasper. Judy currently lives in Colchester VT.

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The Five Buddha Families
By Irini Rockwell

"I always seem to be fending him off," Joan blurts out. She's hosting a dinner party while her husband out of town and she's aware of how little affection she shows him, while he is affectionate to a fault. Two of her guests, Andrea and Bill, laugh and then exchange quick glances. They're in a new relationship and are beginning to see where they get stuck. Andrea wants to engage in an open, unobstructed way; Bill prefers quiet time alone. Michael, the other guest, still wounded from a divorce, launches into a speech about the women in his relationships. "I always seem to fall for emotional women who can't communicate well," he says. "I like working with strong women who think clearly and get the job done," he adds.
We don't know the people at this dinner table, but we can learn a lot about each of them from the different kinds of energy they display. All of us express a unique mix of energy through our attitudes, emotions, decisions and actions. Although we often think of the world in terms of material existence, it is energy that's the vibrant aspect of being: the quality, texture, ambiance or tone of people and environments.
Of the many methods for understanding and working with the energies that pervade our existence, one of the most profound is the "five buddha families," an ancient Buddhist system of understanding enlightened mind and its various aspects. The five buddha family framework is an instrumental component in Buddhist tantra, a path of working with and transmuting mind energy.
The buddha families are traditionally displayed as the mandala of the five tathagatas, or buddhas. The mandala (from the Sanskrit for "circle") aids meditators in understanding how different aspects of existence operate together in an integrated whole. Each of the buddhas in the mandala embodies one of the five different aspects of enlightenment. However, these manifest themselves not only as enlightened energies but also as neurotic states of mind. The buddha families therefore present us with a complete picture of both the sacred world of enlightened mind and the neurotic world of ego-centered existence. We see that they are indeed the same thing; the path of awakening is what makes the difference.
Traditionally, at the center of the mandala is Vairochana, lord of the buddha family, who is white and represents the wisdom of all-encompassing space and its opposite, the fundamental ignorance that is the source of cyclic existence (samsara). The dullness of ignorance is transmuted to a vast space that accommodates anything and everything.
In the east of the mandala is Akshobya, lord of the vajra family, who is blue and represents mirror-like wisdom and its opposite, aggression. The overwhelming directness of aggression is transmuted into the quality of a mirror, clearly reflecting all phenomena. Vajra is associated with the element water, with winter, and with sharpness and textures.
In the south of the mandala is Ratnasambhava, buddha of the ratna family, who is yellow and represents the wisdom of equanimity and its opposite, pride. The fulsomeness of pride is transmuted into the quality of including all phenomena as elements in the rich display. Ratna is associated with the element earth, with autumn, with fertility and depth.
In the west of the mandala is Amitabha, buddha of the padma family, who is red and represents discriminating-awareness wisdom and its opposite, passion or grasping. The intense desire of passion is transmuted into an attention to the fine qualities of each and every detail. Padma is associated with the element fire, with spring, with façade and color.
In the north of the mandala is Amogasiddhi, buddha of the karma family, who is green and represents all-accomplishing wisdom and its opposite, jealousy or paranoia. The arrow-like pointedness of jealousy is transmuted into efficient action. Karma is associated with the element wind, with summer, with growing and completing.
In the early 1970's Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche taught the five wisdom energies to contemporary practitioners as a way of understanding who we are fundamentally: our personality, our emotional landscape, and how we relate to others and our world. He promoted the understanding that there is nothing inherently wrong or bad about the energy itself. He taught that to bring the wisdom energ