(normal text is Rebecca, italicized text is Lama Willa Miller)
Hello again friends! Here we are at week five of my “Everyday Dharma” challenge. Only weeks away from finding my inner Buddha! Consider yourself warned! If you have no clue what I’m talking about, go back to the introduction.
Day one was “Begin with Action”. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by goals, or putting things on hold until you get your act together, Lama Willa encourages you to take action immediately. Every day you can take small actions that help you take a small step towards putting your aspirations and intentions into action. The exercise for the day was to take a moment a few times a day to check in with your actions and consider what kind of future you’re creating with them. What kind of karma you’re creating. I tried this and at first thought how pointless most of my actions during the average day feel. However, with a little more thought I realized that almost every action, regardless of how mundane, does in fact touch people’s lives. Doing the dishes let’s my husband get more rest while he’s sick. Doing my paperwork at the office promptly and accurately allows others to do their jobs better. Even spending time reading an online blog matters, it encourages the people who create it to continue with their endeavor. There are truly thousands of times a day that my seemingly mundane actions help and encourage others.
That’s true. What we do always matters. Lately, I have been thinking about another angle on this, inspired by an ancient Mahayana Buddhist practice. In this practice, you make daily actions into prayer. We usually dismiss our small, everyday activities as insignificant. But it does not have to be this way. We can make every action count. When we eat, we can think “May this food satisfy all hungry beings”. When we sing, “May this melody bring harmony to the hearts of all beings.” When we drive, “May all beings travel the road to enlightenment.” When we watch a movie, “May all beings experience the joy of losing the self.” The possibilities here are endless. This is a way to join our actions with our aspiration to be of service to the wider world. This is a way to bring every little moment onto the path to awakening. An action done with neutrality is a ‘sleeping action’ and an action done with intention and mindfulness is an ‘awake action’. There’s a big difference. Awake actions help make our life more full and meaningful. They make our life into prayer.
Day two discussed becoming “other-centered”. Many people, and I definitely include myself here, are focused on their selves. What do I want? What do I need? This day Lama Willa explains the importance of shifting our perspective to focus on others, and their needs and desires. To put yourself in another person’s place. The exercise for the day is the next time you get irritated by someone else’s actions ask yourself “How does the person with whom I am now irritated experience this moment?” People, as I love to say, are people. How do they experience the moment? They think I’m an obnoxious irritating person, much the way I feel about them at that moment. Humans are fantastic creatures that way.
Thinking about how other people experience the moment is a wonderful exercise in getting outside of ourselves. When we are wrapped up in ourselves, we miss so much, and we give into our own reactivity. If we care only about our own perspective, for example, we think irritation is justified. But in truth, irritation is just a reactive habit. Irritation tells us much more about ourselves than it does about the other person! We can either go along as we have, reacting, becoming irritated, and being unhappy, or we can begin to shake ourselves out of the narrow focus on ‘me’ and ‘my wants’ to ‘the other’ and ‘her/his wants’. It is much more interesting to think about the perspective of the other, and more liberating. But because we have not trained much in the past to do this, we need to make considerable effort in that direction. Shifting the center from self to other takes effort, especially in the beginning.
Day three dealt with generosity and sacrifice. Lama Willa explains that “in the Buddhist context, generosity – the attitude and actions of giving – is the very first quality a seeker on the path works to perfect.” She says that “sacrifice implies both exchange and purpose,” and stresses the importance of making an empathetic sacrifice as opposed to an ambivalent one. I’ll admit, all this talk about sacrifice had me a little concerned about what the exercise for the day would be. Turns out it was a simple exercise that Lama Willa calls the “smiling experiment”. You make a conscious effort to smile at the people you interact with and cross paths with while making an inner wish for their well-being. I found it surprising how often even when I smiled I wasn’t giving it my full attention. Smiling is harder than you would suspect!
It has been shown in psychological studies that the act of smiling at someone makes us happier. Therefore, we don’t always have to wait until we are happy to smile!
Day four discussed the many ways to give. Yup, more giving, are we all seeing a trend here? Lama Willa explains the different ways you can give: material giving (I suspect we can all figure that one out), giving protection (Relax, she’s not asking you to become a vigilante. Protection, in this context, is helping someone feel safe or helping them become safe. Not necessarily running around looking for a gun man to get in front of.), giving ease and comfort (You know, like giving a friend a hug when they need it.), and offering encouragement (Which again, I assume we can all figure that one out.) The exercise for the day was offering encouragement to someone striving to accomplish something. I’m actually not too shabby at this one.
You got it. Giving—or I am also calling it magnanimity here– is the theme of this chapter. On the bodhisattva path, generosity is the very first and most basic step to enlightenment. Why is that? It has something to do with the power of generosity to remedy desire and grasping. Why do we care about getting rid of alleviating grasping? For one, grasping interferes with our experience of natural ease. We are predisposed to want what we don’t have. It is probably somewhat instinctual. But it is also the root of our suffering in so many ways. The more we grasp after something, the more it seems to slip through our fingers. We are left only with an uncomfortable feeling of neediness. Our biggest mistake is that we think this feeling of neediness comes about because we didn’t get the thing we wanted. This is a conventional perspective, but it is not a true perspective. The truth is our neediness predates the ‘not getting’. We are predisposed to feel as if we don’t have enough. That is why people who have everything material they could wish for are often not happy. Until we loosen the grip that neediness has on our minds, we cannot become truly at ease. This brings us to the second way that desire and grasping gets in our way on the spiritual path: it keeps us from developing true empathy. If we are not at ease because we are feeling needy, we stay rooted in place of self-centeredness. When we are self-centered, it is difficult for us to imaginatively place ourselves in another’s shoes, the root of empathy.
So methods that shake us out of the grasping mind put us in a state of relaxation. They are powerful methods that have repercussions in our immediate environment. Generosity is one of those methods. It naturally remedies our mental habit of grasping. Just by giving of our selves—our time, our resources, our attention– we undermine this deep-rooted belief that we somehow do not have enough, and suddenly we feel more at ease. What a paradox that by giving, we feel wealthier and happier!
Day five was about paying attention. Lama Willa says that “the act of being attentive is a form of ‘paying’ our presence forward. When we are simply and directly attentive to another person – to their interests, their needs, their dreams, or merely to their presence – we offer them something lasting and deeply significant.” She highlights more ways to give: sharing knowledge, helping the sick, repaying kindness, offering assistance, listening, and giving victory to others. The exercise for the day was to consider all the ways of giving that have been covered these past few days and decide on your target mode of giving. It should be one you think will be difficult for you. Then look for the opportunity to try it out. I’m guessing helping the sick or giving victory to others would be the hardest for me, however I haven’t had the opportunity to try it out.
Giving victory to others is on my list too. I have always found giving victory to others to be a most challenging—and subtle— practice. It is so counter-intuitive. I remember when I first started to try this as practice, it was big surprise that it was so helpful, psychologically and emotionally speaking. We grow up believing that we should not give victory to others. Rather, it is much better to come out on top. We take this belief right into our subtlest ways of interacting, speaking and thinking. This brings us a lot of invisible trouble and suffering. If we always want to come out on top, where does that leave other people? The more you examine your subtle attitudes about being on top and winning, the more you notice that you unconsciously—or perhaps sometimes consciously– put others down, simply out of a habit of wanting to be smarter, wiser or ‘better’ than they are. In order to give victory to others, you have to reverse this attitude and wish them to come out on top. When you really practice this, it is remarkable. Conflicts are easily resolved, and people begin to really trust you, because you are no longer always rooting for yourself: you are rooting for others. But it requires a brutal sense of self-honesty to make this practice really work for you. You have to be willing to go into the shadows.
Day six talked about trying to “move from haphazard giving to conscious and purposeful giving” by following the Five Steps of Giving. One, look for a need or an opportunity. Two, Plan. Three, Give. Four, do not expect thanks. Five, rejoice and dedicate (Dedicate here means to “mentally dedicate your action of giving to the fulfillment of your spiritual journey.).” You guessed it; the exercise for the day is to follow the Five Steps of Giving. I can’t claim I found momentous needs to help fill, but I did try to think about the work I did at the office. To remember how everything I do makes all the other employees’ lives easier. I’ve been enjoying my job much more since starting this book.
Yay! This is gratifying to read. The signs of success in spiritual practice are not necessarily dramatic and soaring moments of benevolence or wisdom. The deep signs are in everyday moments: real awakening unfolds as our everyday experience becomes more meaningful and we become more grounded in love and wisdom.
Day seven discussed spiritual sacrifice. It’s about building compassion through the “Contemplation on Giving and Receiving”. And yes you clever readers, the exercise for the day was the “Contemplation on Giving and Receiving”. You start with The Three Arrivals, then say your Awakening Prayer, relax and breathe. You then visualize someone you know who is currently suffering from illness, mental anguish, or other difficulties. Consider what it must be like to be that person and develop the heartfelt wish to relieve this person of suffering. Engage in pulling in pain as your breathe in and sending out love when you breathe out for at least ten breaths. Here’s the deal folks, anytime I need to speak out loud it ruins it for me. What should be a contemplative endeavor becomes awkward when I’m supposed to recite things out loud. Same thing happens with I attempt magical practices. If I talk out loud, I immediately feel stupid. This exercise became much more effective when I quit saying my Awakening Prayer out loud. The universe can hear my thoughts, right?
I’m glad you have adapted this practice to make it work for you! Yes, silent prayers are heard. I’m glad you brought this up. This goes for all the practices in this book: adaptation and flexibility is a virtue.
And with that, it’s onto week six! Almost there! See you next week!
About Lama Willa:
Lama Willa Miller is a meditation teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. She has studied and practiced meditation for the last twenty years, training with Venerable Kalu Rinpoche, Venerable Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche, Lama Norlha Rinpoche, Khenpo Tsultrim Gyatso Rinpoche, Bokar Rinpoche, and other teachers.
She completed two seminary trainings [three-year retreats] at Kagyu Thubten Choling in upstate New York, becoming authorized as a lama, a Buddhist minister, upon completion of her training. Before and after her retreats, she spent time in Nepal, Tibet, and India, studying Buddhism and engaging in service work.
She currently lives in Arlington, MA with her husband and two dogs, where she writes, teaches Tibetan Buddhist practice and meditation, principally with Natural Dharma Fellowship. She is also working towards a PhD at Harvard University.
Lama Willa is author of the book “Everyday Dharma: Seven Weeks to Finding the Buddha in You” (2009, Quest Books), a practical guide for getting started on the spiritual path. Visit her website here.
To follow Lama Willa on Twitter, go to http://twitter.com/lamawilla.
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