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Finding Our Way
by Bhiksuni
Thubten Chodron ©
Understanding what Dharma practice
is can be difficult, and I have made many mistakes trying to
follow the path. Although I meant well and thought I was practicing
properly at the time, only later did I come to see my misunderstandings.
My hope is that by sharing these with you, you may avoid them.
However, that may not be possible, because in some cases, we
only learn by going through the difficulties ourselves and confronting
the pain and confusion of our fixed attitudes. This certainly
is true for me.
One mistake I made was assuming that because
I understood the words of the Dharma, I understood their meaning.
For example, I thought that my Dharma practice was developing
well, because when I lived in India, I didn't get angry very
much. After some time, my teacher sent me to live at a Dharma
center in Italy, where I was the only American nun among a
group of macho Italian monks. You can imagine the conflicts
we had! But I couldn't figure out why I was having problems
because I thought my patience had matured. Every evening I
would study chapter six of Shantideva's text Guide
to a Bodhisattva's Way of Life, which dealt with patience,
and every day I would again get mad at the people around me.
Although I knew the words of Shantideva's text well and thought
I was practicing them properly, my mind continued to blame
others for all the conflicts and problems.
It took me a long time to figure out what
practicing patience meant, and I am still working on it. Whenever
people live together there are conflicts, simply because people
see things in different ways. When I lived in the nunnery
in France, I handled my anger by sitting on my meditation
cushion and contemplating patience. I never thought to approach
the other person and say, "The way the situation appears
to me is like this. How do you see it?" and to listen
and discuss openly what had happened. I thought that since
the cause of suffering was in my own mind, only meditation
would solve the problem. Meanwhile, I was convinced that my
version of the story was the one right one, and if I just
did one of the mental juggling acts that Shantideva taught,
the anger would go away. But all my mental juggling acts were
intellectual machinations and didn't touch my anger.
Years later, I attended a workshop on
communication skills and conflict resolution. It became clear
that when I was angry, I could do other things besides withdrawing
from the situation and meditating. Of course, we have to look
at our mind and develop patience, but we can also discuss
the problem with the other person. We can share how we feel
in a situation without blaming the other person for our feelings.
I began to understand that I had to make more effort to communicate
and that I could learn a lot by opening up and discussing
things with other people. This can sometimes be scary, and
I still find it difficult to go to a person and say, "There's
a problem here. Let's talk about it." However, I see
that developing good communication skills and meditating on
patience and compassion go hand in hand. If I approach the
other person, deeply listen to them, and understand his or
her experience, my anger automatically dissipates and compassion
arises.
We may wonder: Why do we need to learn
communication and conflict resolution skills? If we develop
an altruistic intention (bodhicitta), won't these skills naturally
arise? No, a bodhisattva does not automatically know how to
do everything; he or she must still train in many skills.
For example, having an altruistic intention does not mean
one knows how to fly an airplane. One has to learn that skill.
Similarly, although bodhicitta gives us an excellent foundation,
we still need to learn skills for communicating with others,
resolving conflicts, mediating disputes, and so on. The internal
attitude of bodhicitta is complemented well by practical communication
skills.
Individualism and Community Life
The Buddha established the sangha for
several reasons. One is that he wanted monks and nuns to support,
encourage, and help each other on the path. He set up a community
so that we could learn from each other, so that we do not
become isolated individuals doing whatever we fancy. For this
reason, many of our precepts deal with how to live together
harmoniously as a community and how to admonish each other
so that we have to face our rationalizations and excuses.
Thus the sangha community is a mirror helping us to purify
our mind and to grow in compassion, tolerance, and understanding.
We frequently have difficulty distinguishing
between our individualism and our individuality. The former
is the self-centered pursuit of individual rather than collective
interests. It is closely linked to self-grasping and self-centeredness,
two of our principal obstructions. Adhering to our individualism
makes living in community a trial for ourselves and others.
Our individuality, on the other hand, is our unique combination
of various qualities. In Dharma practice we learn to discriminate
between qualities that are realistic and beneficial and those
that are not. Then we set about increasing the former and
applying the antidotes to the latter. In this way, we develop
and use our individuality for the benefit of both ourselves
and others.
Our Western cultural conditioning often
results in confusion between individualism and individuality.
Thus, we may find it difficult to follow our teachers' advice
or to live together with other sangha members, because we
feel our individuality and autonomy are being threatened,
when really only our self-centered individualism is at stake.
When we live in community, we realize we are full of opinions
about everything from how fast to chant in our group ceremonies
to how to realize emptiness. If we hold tightly onto our own
ideas, neglecting to see that they are simply opinions and
not reality, we find being with other people quite miserable
because they seldom agree with us! We need to be aware that
being ordained involves re-socialization and gradually relinquishing
our stubborn, closed-minded individualism. Monastic training-learning
to think and act like a monastic-is designed to accomplish
this.
While in Taiwan to receive the bhikshuni
ordination, I observed my individualism very clearly. The
thirty-two day training program, culminating in the three
ordinations of sramanerika, bhikshuni, and bodhisattva, is
extremely strict. Everyone must do the same thing at the same
time in the same way. The juniors must listen to and follow
the instructions of the seniors. Each morning, before receiving
teachings, all five hundred monastics had to file into the
main hall and from there file into the teaching hall. In my
eyes, this was a waste of time, and I saw another way to do
it that would save time by filing directly into the teaching
hall. With my American emphasis on efficiency, I wanted to
"fix the problem." But there were some difficulties:
first, I did not speak Chinese, and second, even if I had,
the elders would not have been particularly interested in
hearing my solution, because their method worked for them.
This forced me to do something quite difficult: be quiet and
do things somebody else's way. Such an insignificant situation
put me face to face with my American fix-it mentality and
my Western individualism. It forced me to learn to be content
and to cooperate in doing things another way.
Accepting and rejoicing in the positive
aspects of our own and others' individuality are important.
For example, each of our Dharma sisters and brothers will
have his or her own way of practicing. Not everyone will practice
the way we do. Variety does not mean we have to judge one
as better than the others. It simply reflects that each person
has his or her own inclination and disposition. We should
not compete with other practitioners. We do not need to feel
inadequate because others are doing things that we are not
able to. For example, some nuns are Vinaya scholars. I am
interested in Vinaya but am not an expert in it. Yet I am
delighted that some nuns are learned in this area because
we need nuns who specialize in Vinaya and we can learn from
them. Some nuns are meditators and do years of retreat. I
am not ready to do a long retreat-I need to accumulate more
positive potential and purify more before I can do that. But
I am so glad there are nuns who do long retreat. I am happy
there are nuns working in hospices and health care, nuns teaching
children, and nuns organizing Buddhist events. I cannot do
all those things but I rejoice that others can. Each of us
will express her devotion to the Three Jewels and her gratitude
to sentient beings in a different way, and the world needs
all of them. If there were only meditators or scholars or
social workers, the Dharma would not be round and full. We
need everyone to express her practice in her individual way,
and we need to say to one another, "Thank you. I'm so
glad you're doing that."
Cultural Forms and the Essence of the
Dharma
Of the five hundred people ordained in
1986 in Taiwan, only two of us were Westerners. For the first
two weeks, no one translated for us except for a few kind
Chinese nuns who summarized the proceedings for us during
the breaktimes. For those two weeks, the two of us went to
all the sessions in a full daily program barely understanding
what we were doing. For me, as a college graduate, to do something
I did not understand and to be content with learning about
it gradually was very difficult. Because I wanted very much
to receive the bhikshuni vow, I was forced to give up my arrogant
attitude and accept the situation.
Because I was present for many hours at
events that I did not understand, I began to look at what
subsequently has become an important issue for me: what is
culture and what is Dharma? Having finally mastered many Tibetan
customs, I was now in a Chinese monastery where the customs
were different. Both of these traditions are Buddhist; yet
superficially, in terms of dress, language, and ways of doing
things, they are different. What significance does this have
for me as a Westerner? What in my training as a nun is due
to the culture of the countries where Buddhism has resided
for centuries and what is the actual Dharma that transcends
culture? What is the essence of the Buddha's teachings that
we must practice, bring back to our Western countries, and
teach others? What is cultural form that we need not bring
to the West?
For me, this topic is of crucial importance
and is a work in progress. My conclusion so far is that the
Four Noble Truths, love, compassion, the altruistic intention
of bodhicitta, and the wisdom realizing emptiness are the
essence of the Dharma. These cannot be seen with the eyes;
the understanding exists in our heart. The real Dharma is
developed within our mind, and the forms are skillful tools
that exist within each culture. We must be able to distinguish
these so that we develop the real Dharma within ourselves
and do not fool ourselves into thinking we are good practitioners
simply because we are surrounded with Asian items.
For many years, I tried to act like the
Tibetan nuns-shy, self-effacing, sweet. But it didn't work.
Why? Because I was from a different culture and had a different
upbringing than the Tibetan nuns. In school I was taught to
express my thoughts, to doubt and question, to think on my
own, and to be articulate. I had to confront the fact that
copying a cultural form and others' external behavior was
not necessarily practicing the Dharma; it was simply squeezing
myself to conform to a particular personality type or culture
that I had idealized as being "real Buddhism." I
began to notice that my teachers had very different personalities:
some were introverted, others outgoing; some were serious,
others laughed a lot. Within the context of our different,
constantly changing and illusive personalities, we practice
the Dharma by being aware of our motivations, attitudes, and
preconceptions, developing the realistic and beneficial ones,
and applying the antidotes to the destructive and unrealistic
ones. This work is done internally. External forms, which
are involved with one culture or another, are prompts to stimulate
this.
The issue of culture and essence kept
following me. As resident teacher at Amitabha Buddhist Centre
in Singapore, I found myself, an American, teaching Chinese
to chant prayers in Tibetan, a language which none of us understood.
The Tibetan chanting sounded nice and our Tibetan masters
were pleased with our chanting, but we were not practicing
the Dharma because we did not understand what we were saying.
Although the translation process will take years and extend
well beyond our lifetimes, it is essential. In time, masters
will write prayers directly in our Western languages. People
with musical ability will write melodies for the prayers,
and we will have beautiful liturgy in our own languages.
As time went by, I began to see that,
having lived in the Tibetan community for so long, I had developed
a "cultural inferiority complex." When I initially
left America to live in the East, I felt the West was corrupt
and hoped Eastern ways would be better. But, try as I might,
I could never act or think like a proper Tibetan, and began
to lose my self-confidence. After many years, I realized that
this loss of respect for my culture-of-origin was neither
a healthy nor a productive attitude. Self-confidence is essential
for a successful Dharma practice. This meant I had to see
both the good and bad points of the Western culture I grew
up in, as well as the good and bad points of the Tibetan culture.
Comparing the two and judging one inferior and the other superior-no
matter which one came out on top-was not productive. Because
most of us Western monastics are operating cross-culturally,
we would benefit from adopting the positive aspects and values
of all the cultures we contact, while leaving behind whatever
prejudices and preconceptions we may encounter.
After many years of living in Asia, I
came back to the United States. It was important for me to
reconnect in a positive way with the culture in which I grew
up. We need to be at peace with our past, not to reject or
ignore it. For me that meant acknowledging both the good and
bad qualities of my background and culture and freeing my
mind from either attachment or aversion to it.
Similarly, it is important to make peace
with the religion we learned as a child. Having a negative
attitude about our childhood religion indicates we are still
bound by it, for our minds are closed and trapped in aversion.
Although the religion of our childhood may not have met our
spiritual needs, we did learn useful values from it. It got
us going on the spiritual path, and it is important to appreciate
its good points.
For me this process took an interesting
turn. Having been raised Jewish, I happened to be living in
Dharamsala, India, in 1990, when a Jewish delegation came
to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama, young Tibetan intellectuals,
and "JuBus" (Jewish Buddhists). Meditating and talking
with the Jews, I felt confident in being a Buddhist and yet
happily familiar with their culture, faith, and traditions.
I began to look at points in common between the two faiths
and to appreciate the emphasis on ethical values, compassion,
and social concern that Judaism had given me. Now, in Seattle,
I participate in an ongoing Jewish-Buddhist dialogue, in which
we discuss issues such as love, compassion, and suffering.
In addition, Israelis have invited me to teach in their country,
and in the two trips thus far, I have felt a wonderful connection
with the people, helping me to explain Dharma principles and
meditation techniques in a way that corresponds to their background.
Self-esteem and Self-confidence
I also misunderstood the Dharma by mistakenly
using the teachings to increase my self-hatred. Meditating
upon the disadvantages of self-centeredness, I would feel
guilty for being so selfish, instead of seeing the selfish
attitude as something separate from the nature of my mind.
Eventually it became clear that whenever I meditated and felt
worse about myself, I was misinterpreting the teachings and
not applying them correctly. The Buddha's purpose in teaching
topics such as the lower realms of rebirth and the disadvantages
of self-centeredness was not to increase our despondency.
Rather, he wanted us to see clearly the disadvantages of cyclic
existence and its causes so that we would generate the determination
to free ourselves and others from them.
Feelings of low self-esteem and inadequacy
are prevalent in Westerners. In 1990, I was an observer at
a conference of Western scientists and scholars with His Holiness
the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala when the topic of low self-esteem
was raised. Tibetans do not have words in their language for
low self-esteem and guilt, so Westerners' problems with these
feelings are not readily comprehensible to them. His Holiness
had difficulty understanding how someone could not like himself.
He looked around this room of educated, successful people
and asked, "Who feels low self-esteem?" Everyone
looked at each other and replied, "We all do." His
Holiness was shocked and asked us the causes of this feeling.
Brainstorming, we found reasons ranging from parents not holding
their children enough, to the doctrine of original sin, to
competition in school.
Our difficulty with self-esteem can also
be linked to our emphasis on perfection and our wish to be
the best, attributes that Western society teaches us to have.
Caught in this conditioning, we sometimes misinterpret the
Dharma: we think the perfection of ethical discipline, for
example, is living up to an external standard imposed on us
by others, similar to the ten commandments. However, the Dharma
is not about striving for externally defined perfection to
please our guru or the Buddha the way we previously tried
to be good and please God. Practicing Dharma does not involve
twisting ourselves into psychological knots to become our
own or anyone else's ideal of the perfect monastic. Rather,
the Dharma concerns looking inside ourselves and understanding
all the various processes that comprise us. We come to see
that our actions bear results and that if we want happiness,
we need to create the causes for it by following the Dharma
path, that is, by applying the meditations to diminish our
disturbing attitudes and develop our good qualities.
Low self-esteem, leading to discouragement,
is a hindrance on the path, for it becomes a form of laziness
preventing us from making joyous effort in our practice. Thus,
His Holiness has continued to explore the issue of low self-esteem
and to propose Dharma antidotes to it. First, we must understand
that the very nature of our mind is free from defilements.
In other words, disturbing attitudes and negative emotions
are like clouds that obscure the sky-like nature of mind but
are not an inherent part of it. This basic purity of mind
is a valid basis for having self-confidence. Not depending
on external circumstances, it does not fluctuate, and thus
we do not need to worry about the basis of our self-confidence
disintegrating. Therefore, we can and should respect and care
for ourselves. In fact, the path involves learning to care
for ourselves in a proper, balanced way, not in a self-preoccupied
or self-defeating way. To become a bodhisattva, we need a
sense of a strong self, but this differs greatly from the
self-grasping ignorance that is the root of cyclic existence.
This valid sense of an efficacious conventional self enables
us to be joyful and energetic in practicing the path.
In addition, we must recognize the positive
factors in our lives right now. Instead of lamenting about
the few things in our lives that do not correspond to our
wishes, we need to focus on the positive circumstances, such
as the fact that we have a human body and human intelligence.
In addition, we have encountered the Dharma and qualified
teachers to guide us, and we have interest in spiritual issues.
If we contemplate all these fortunate circumstances and the
outstanding results that can come from Dharma practice, our
mind will no longer be interested in self-deprecating thoughts.
Another antidote to low self-esteem is
compassion, which enables us to accept ourselves and to have
a sense of humor about our foibles while simultaneously endeavoring
to remedy them. While low self-esteem causes us to spiral
inwards and think predominantly about ourselves, compassion-the
wish for all beings, including ourselves, to be free of suffering-opens
our heart to recognize the universality of the wish for happiness
and freedom from suffering. Our attention then shifts from
the unhealthy self-preoccupation of low self-esteem to a caring
attitude that feels connected to all others on a deep level.
Such an attitude naturally gives us a sense of joy and purpose
in life, thus increasing our self-confidence.
Living the Precepts
Receiving and trying to live in accordance
with the bhikshuni precepts has had considerable impact on
me. In 1986, when I was ordained as a bhikshuni, there were
only a handful of Western bhikshunis. For years prior to that
I prayed to be able to receive these precepts because I wanted
to practice and preserve the monastic lifestyle which had
helped me so much.
The training program for the bhikshuni
ordination in Taiwan lasted thirty-two days. It was difficult
being in a foreign country, where I did not know the language
or the customs. Standing hour after hour in the heat to attend
training sessions and rituals that were in Chinese was not
easy; but the strength of my wish to receive the ordination
helped me to go through the difficulties. As we rehearsed
the ordination ceremony, we gradually came to understand it,
so that the actual ceremony became very powerful. At that
moment, I felt the wave of blessing that comes from joining
the lineage of nuns who have practiced the Dharma for over
twenty-five hundred years, from the time of the Buddha until
the present. This created a new sense of confidence in myself
and in the practice. In addition, it increased my mindfulness,
for it was the kindness of my teachers and the lay people
who supported me that gave me this opportunity. My way of
repaying their kindness was by trying to keep the precepts
well and transform my mind.
The ordination connected me not only to
all the nuns of the past, but also to all the nuns that are
yet to come. I realized that I had to take responsibility
for future generations of nuns. I could no longer stay in
my childlike state and complain, "Why do nuns face difficult
conditions? Why doesn't anyone help the nuns?" I had
to grow up and take responsibility for improving not only
my own situation, but also that of future generations. I came
to see that practicing Dharma is not simply doing my own personal
studies and practice; it is preserving something very precious
so that others can have access to it.
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