So, we’ll start by settling the mind. We’ll do the same as we did yesterday evening. At the start of the session, as soon as you begin your meditation, form an intention. The intention is to remain with the breath. Just very simple! It’s not a big deal. You just intend “I will remain with the breath.” Put it in the category of all the million of intentions that you make during the course of any day. For example, when you woke up this morning, what preceded your being able to get out of bed? Intention. Then you decided to make a cup of tea. Intention. Now, it’s interesting that you might form an intention to have a cup of tea and if you are not very hung up about having a cup of tea something might intervene and you might end up not doing it but do something else instead. Have you noticed that? So, what you notice is that, although you form an intention, often something can override the intention, can divert it. So, when we meditate we are going to form the intention in exactly the same way, not with any great strain, just form a gentle intention, and see what happens. Ok?

MEDITATION

Allow your mind to settle, using the breath as a support.

Allow your mind to focus more on the out breath.

Notice how the body relaxes and naturally releases the breath.

Have in your awareness the fact that this releasing is effortless.

Notice how thoughts and feelings arise. If the mind becomes involved with them the mind becomes disturbed and unsettled. Instead of being involved, allow yourself to release. Gently release the thoughts and feelings into the out-breath. You don’t push them away or try to get rid of them. You simply release them. Let the mind relax. The mind lets go of any sense that it has to do something or struggle or strive to achieve. Let go of any sense of success or failure. The mind rests at ease. Very simply focused on the breath.

END OF MEDITATION

RN:What happened?
STUDENT: Thoughts wandered.
RN: Thoughts wandered. Who didn’t have thoughts wandering? It doesn’t mean you are naughty or bad or that you have failed. It’s just what happens. Now, it’s quite interesting isn’t it? How many times have you formed the intention to have a cup of tea and gone and had porridge instead? You form the intention to rest your mind on the breath and mind wanders. Why is that? Why does it do that? It is habit! We could call it conditioning or habit. Where is that habit rooted? In the unconscious. Can we get some idea of the way that the whole thing comes together? Habit arising out of the unconscious mind. We can observe our conscious awareness. That we are familiar with. That is what decides to have tea. Then when we meditate we begin to observe that conscious awareness is being shaped all the time by underlying forces. Now this is very interesting because normally we are not really aware of that. Normally we think we are kind of ‘Boss’ of this ramshackle outfit we call ‘Me’. ‘I’m Boss’. But, as soon as we start looking just below the surface we begin to discover something quite different. You know, a little while ago when multi-nationals were beginning to become very powerful there were a few conspiracy theories that the multi-nationals were going to take over and rule the world. There are some multi-nationals that have bigger economies than small countries; that’s how powerful they are. So, some guy got interested in this conspiracy theory and he decided he would investigate a couple of these multi-nationals and discover ‘who was conspiring’, who were these shadowy figures who were controlling or seeking to control the world. So he began to look into the policy making decisions of these big companies. And guess what he discovered? There’s nobody there! In a lot of them there is no over all single body or person who decides “This is the policy”. What he discovered was a kind of amorphous ad-hoc responding to market forces or whatever but there was no individual or group of individuals who actually had any clear understanding of where this giant organisation was going. It is just moving along under it’s own impetus. And we are no different! We are moving along under the impetus of all those habitual tendencies – These habitual patterns.

So, we have begun a journey. Has anyone seen the Zen Ox-herding pictures? They depict the meditators search for the mind (typically they are drawn in beautiful circles). And the first one; the meditator is a little man, wandering bewildered in the countryside. He doesn’t see anything. Second one, he sees a hoof print in the ground. Third one, he catches sight of a hoof disappearing out of sight at the edge of the picture. So, the mind is depicted as a bull, and the little man is us, looking for the mind, trying to see it. It is quite possible that we are at the stage of the first or second picture. We don’t even know where the mind is, (assuming it exists!) And then, the first thing that we do is we see a trace of it; we see an imprint. And the trace of it is – distraction. When we are drawn away into distraction then we are getting a trace of what it is that has caused that. This mind. Then when our mindfulness develops a little bit we actually get a glimpse of the moment when a thought arises and the decision is made to move away from mindfulness into thinking. That’s the first glimpse. So, that’s what we’re going to be doing.

Now, the mind is not some abstract thing. I mean, in terms of Buddhist psychological analysis we know that the ‘Mind’ doesn’t even exist, but for the moment we are talking as though it does, because to us it does seem real. And the distinguishing feature of what we call mind is the sense of self. And the over-riding energy in relation to it is grasping. But in the beginning we don’t recognise either. Because they have always been there. They have always been the context of all our experience. So they happen naturally and therefore we don’t recognise them. And it is very difficult to turn around and start to recognise that which has always been there and taken for granted. To recognise and clearly see it for what it is.

Noble silence:
The reason we come on retreat is so that we can create for ourselves a very specific environment – it is the environment in which we can train to be mindful. Mindful is being ‘in the moment’, knowing what is happening, while it is happening. That is the whole context of retreat, to give ourselves an environment within which we can do this. And if we do this for three days, we keep bringing our mind back, into focus, knowing what is happening while it is happening, knowing what we are doing, while we are doing it, a change will start to come about in the mind – quite definitely, there is no doubt about that. The mind begins to settle down. The restlessness, the distractedness, the activity, definitely begins to subside. And, it is as though the surface layer begins to come to rest a little bit. And it does that because we are not constantly engaging and responding to external stimuli in the way we normally do. Probably the commonest external stimulus that we all respond to is interaction with other human beings; talking and interacting in various ways. Every time we interact, in any way at all, our minds are affected. They get churned up again. You can think of a pond of water or an ocean. It’s nature is to be completely still, but what causes it to be turbulent is the wind passing across it. Every time the wind passes across it, it disturbs it to some degree. If it is a light breeze it will just cause little ripples. If it is a strong wind it will start causing more movement. If it is a sustained gale you will have huge crashing waves. And our minds are just like that. The more we involve ourselves with external stimuli, the more the mind is disturbed and churned around.

Like the ocean, a certain energy is invested in it so that even when the external stimulus stops, the movement continues. So, we have a session, we sit, we meditate, bring the mind in to a little bit of calmness and then we go and have tea and have a good old gas. We come back and we sit and the first half of the meditation is spent processing all the stuff we’ve been talking about. We go through it, re-running it, having new conversations taking off in different directions, planning what we’ll say when we go out at lunch time. Then eventually we remember that we are here to meditate and we settle in the last ten minutes of the session, and then we go and have lunch and the whole thing starts up again.

And that is happening all the time; the interaction is generating new impressions, new potentials in our minds. And those impressions and potentials are going to come out, definitely! And then we are going to want to process them. We are going to want to take hold of them, play around with them, develop them. So it is absolutely inevitable that every interaction that you have is going to disturb your mind. There is no way round it! It is not possible for that not to happen. So, it’s two steps forward, two steps back. One step forward, half a step back. Three steps forward, two and a half back. That is what happens if we talk. When I came out of the four year retreat I went back to South Africa and after I had been there a week I went to a movie with a friend. Guess what movie I saw; Bladerunner! and the imagery from that movie flashed into my mind so powerfully at regular intervals for the next two weeks. It was just like complete visions would flash into my mind. And then I understood how, when the mind settles, it becomes very receptive and then how powerfully stimuli impact and then replay themselves. Because they impact with their own energy and that energy gets taken in to the mind and is going to come out. So one of the reasons for silence in retreat is to give us a chance to step aside from all that normal level of receiving stimuli so that we can allow the mind to settle more and more as the days go by. Now, we don’t want to do this because we are habituated to interacting, to talking and so on. We find it comfortable, we find it interesting, we find it enjoyable. We like it! And therefore, we don’t like not to do it. And therefore we feel uncomfortable if we don’t do it. Isn’t that so? Just a little bit uncomfortable. The discomfort is the discomfort of not acting out our normal grasping tendencies. That is what it is. So, if you want to get the full benefit out of this retreat, try to keep Noble Silence and observe how the mind has a problem with it (if it has a problem). Use it as part of your meditation training, observing how the mind responds. Hugely instructive!

WHY IS THE MIND UNSETTLED?

First we need to ask why it is necessary to settle the mind, and what is the unsettled mind. Mostly, it is the mind we have always lived with, the one that can’t remain on the cushion. It can’t remain in this room or anywhere near this place most of the time. We sit down, focus on the external meditation support, and we form an intention. Our intention is to remain present with the meditation support.

Then a very interesting thing happens. Something within us, within seconds, perhaps a split second, overrides that intention. In an instant, we are no longer with the meditation support, instead we are thinking about something. Now that is quite interesting if we sit back and look at it.

Here we are, these ‘self-deterministic’ human beings who are supposedly able to guide our destinies through the universe, but we can’t even carry out an intention to keep the mind in one place for more than a few seconds at best! Something else overrides that intention and we are away.

What overrides that intention? Habit. What sort of habit? The habit of having a butterfly mind. An unsettled mind. A mind that prefers to be in constant movement and activity. When we try to meditate we discover how distracted and unsettled our minds really are. It’s usually quite a healthy shock to new meditators.

So our mind zaps away, out of this room. We could be in Trafalgar Square, New York, or down at a Cape Town beach within an instant of starting our meditation. Quite possibly it takes a little bit of time before we catch up with it and bring it back into this room. Then it’s gone again! Then we catch up with it and bring it back into this room.

So that is the unsettled mind. It is the mind that, of its own accord, moves away. When our mindfulness is weak we don’t even realise that it has moved. It’s as though we fell asleep. We sit there and think, ‘Ah, now I’m going to meditate… I wonder what we will have for supper tonight?’ We’re gone! Now we realise that if we don’t learn to settle the mind we are unlikely even to begin meditating.

HOW WE KEEP THE MIND UNSETTLED

Interestingly, what we don’t understand is that we are continually strengthening the tendency of the mind to be unsettled, and we are doing it in a variety of ways.

One is, we continually seek entertainment. It may be through TV, radio, a book, a conversation or drinking coffee. If we are denied all those external forms, all we have left to fall back on is the entertainment of the mind’s imaginative activity. And that is limitless! It can run videos forever! It does it because we want it to. At a certain level, we most certainly want it to. It’s boring and tiresome just to be here watching the breath. So we definitely want to be doing something else.

Quite often we won’t let our minds settle because we are afraid that if we do manage to switch off the eternal video we will uncover what we have spent so much of our lives burying and keeping hidden. What we don’t realise is that our intention to remain present and mindful is overridden by another intention which doesn’t reveal itself. It is another of those surreptitious hidden reefs. That intention comes into action the moment the mind spots the possibility of doing something more interesting than meditating. So if we put our mind on sound and the sounds are entertaining or strong, like the sound of an aeroplane, then we can really get off on that because we may not like it. Or if it is something nice like a bird, we can get off on that. If it is the wind in the trees we can stay with that pretty well but after a while there isn’t much juice left in these external possibilities. So our minds now want something different. Something begins to emerge on the outer edge of our mental vision and presents itself as a preferable option. Then this deeper level of intention says, ‘Yes!’ and we’re there. This is one way how we unsettle ourselves.

UNSETTLING THROUGH REACTIVITY

Then there are more rigorous ways of unsettling the mind. We start meditating and go through maybe five or ten minutes of being quite diligent in bringing our minds back to the focus. Then, deep down, a memory stirs of something somebody said to us some weeks ago. We had an argument which perhaps we lost. We didn’t like that so there is quite a strong residual emotional element left. This surfaces somewhere in the back of our minds and sends a tremor through the whole body. Perhaps a feeling that we didn’t like this unresolved blow to our pride, or whatever it was.

Now a new thing happens. We hook into that memory and rerun it. We rerun it with all its emotional impact and this does more than the bland entertainment cycle we’ve just talked about. This really gets us stewed up because we completely invoke all that old business, it hooks onto a whole lot of other related emotion in our minds and before we know it, there is a good old turmoil going on. So there is no tranquillity in our meditation. We’ve managed to get our minds pretty turbulent. Now we’re steamed up! We’re ready to go and punch somebody. This is frustrating because here we are sitting meditating and nobody has even picked a fight with us, and we’re ready to go and punch somebody. What have we done? Thoroughly unsettled our minds.

What we begin to see is that there are these sorts of mechanisms in operation. Although they are relatively superficial within the meditation context they are going on in our daily lives. So if, in meditation, we spot our unsettlers, we can begin to identify them in life. We begin to see how continually through the day we are unsettling our minds through our reactivity.

When we are driving a car, for example, and somebody speeds, suddenly appearing over the hill and nearly crashing into us, we get a big fright. Then we get angry. Then we go through a really big scene in our mind about how other people shouldn’t drive so fast and go through red traffic lights. Then somebody pulls in front of us, changing lanes quickly. Now we are even more angry! The piece of road in front of us, that space there, belongs to us. They should know that! They shouldn’t get into it quickly, or at least without asking our permission. So by the time we get to work we are really not in a fit state to do much except growl at people.

If we go back over this whole business in the traffic we begin to see that it is a self-generated turmoil. It is just an indulgence in reactivity. And there are very definite alternatives. The moment we got into the traffic, and the other guy was speeding, we could see what we were doing. We could know that ‘OK, this is what happens in traffic. I do it myself sometimes. When I am in a hurry, I speed up over hills and I go through red traffic lights.’ I’ll bet most of us have done that! So that person isn’t doing anything different from what we have all done. It is just our ego territorial compulsion that is making us buy into reactivity.

If we see this we can let it go. If the guy pulls in front of us, we just slow down and let him go. If he wants to change lanes, we just slow down and let him go. Slowly, it’s no big deal. The stress of driving through traffic falls away and we are just adjusting to and accommodating the needs of other human beings.

What we see from this example is that through our reactivity and our projection we’re keeping our minds unsettled and we are convinced that it is the fault of other people. The traffic example is easy to deal with because it is so obvious, but this is going on in many areas of our lives. We are doing this constantly because we are not aware of our expectations, assumptions and reactivity. We have probably done this so consistently through our lives that we no longer realise we are doing it.

We may say, If only I could go away to a really nice quiet holiday spot, I would be much more at ease. Then I would be much more peaceful and happy.’ Unfortunately we wouldn’t because we take with us our built-in tendency to unsettle and stress ourselves out. What we have to learn is that if we begin to understand how we unsettle ourselves, we can free ourselves and relax wherever we are. Not always, but pretty well anywhere. The point is that each time we unsettle the mind we strengthen the tendency for it to be unsettled. This means it will remain unsettled for a long time after the specific incident is past. ln addition, because the strong tendency is there, it will unsettle itself of its own accord, even when we don’t want it to. We can’ blame it because we set the causes in motion ourselves.

HOW TO SETTLE THE MIND

It is important that we come to our meditation understanding that we are inherently inclined to unsettle our minds. External things do not generally unsettle our minds; internal things do. We are responsible for this inner environment. So we sit and meditate and then see the first unsettling action. The mind is wanting to take off somewhere. Now comes the important moment. The normal tendency is to grab the mind and wrench it back, an act of violence similar to a parent in a supermarket with little Annie, who wants to take stuff off one of the display stands. The tired, overwrought, frustrated father grabs hold of her and yanks her back. Of course, straight away there is a scream and a scuffle and a fight.

That is what happens to our mind if we treat it that way. If we wrench the mind back from its preferred course of activity we are going to create inner turmoil, adding stress, tension and resentment to our unsettledness. We will feel an internal resistance building up in the mind. So don’t attempt to settle the mind forcefully – it won’t work. Try to be the kind parent: return to the meditation support gently, kindly. That’s the first principle of settling – know there is no need to chase off after any thought, but when the tendency to do so arrives, simply turn gently away from the temptation and return to the support.

If in daily life we embark upon an enterprise, we usually prepare for it. Death is no different. The reason should be apparent by now: the mind that experiences dying is a continuation of the mind that is reading these words. Unless we have the aid of an accomplished lama, no external force is going to manifest magically and whisk us away into a heaven world when we die.

Although it is the same mind, and therefore the same me, it is not the superficial daily me. It is the total me and includes the hidden, subjective, repressed and unfaced aspects of my stream of consciousness. All these will manifest and predominate in the death experience. The superficial, socialised, intellectual and conceptual aspects will shatter, disintegrate and dissolve.

Put bluntly, all the mirrors and smoke, lies, pretences, ideas and images we have woven into our personality will fall away to reveal the deeper truth of what we really are. That is what we will experience. It is a theme used by some novelists who like to put their characters into traumatic situations where their normal controls and supports are removed. This strips away a person’s masks and reveals the first underlying layer of ‘truth’, which is usually different from the one presented to the world. It is an appealing theme, because at heart most of us want to be real, get in touch with our inner reality, and equally be in touch with others in a way that is more genuine, true and meaningful. But we usually don’t want to face all that this involves, such as accepting and coming to terms with our shadows.

So much alienation in our so-called civilised societies is caused by the psychological isolation of individuals. People create and crouch behind their images of themselves, thinking that this will lead to happiness. It doesn’t. It leads instead to loneliness, isolation, alienation and misery. People get out of touch with themselves and cannot get in touch with others. So relationships at all levels become shallow, meaningless, unfulfilling. Life becomes the same.

Death changes this. What disintegrates along with the death of the body is this superficial world mind. When we are dying we experience what we are, completely and directly. Dream gives us hints of how this will be, because in dream the underlying energies seep through into the dream state, usually making enigmatic but true statements about the deeper state of the mind.

So how does one prepare if so much of the mind is beyond the reach of our daily, conscious experience? There are ways, which I propose to explain. But first the overriding principle needs to be understood.

HABITUAL TENDENCIES

Our personalities are expressions of deep, underlying tendencies. Some are hidden, usually because we prefer not to acknowledge or know about them. Others peep through and surprise us in undefended moments, and others may be reasonably familiar to us on a day-to-day basis.

For example, we may be profoundly insecure, needy, grasping and greedy. This is a common complex that rules the lives of most people who are driven to acquisitiveness. They won’t acknowledge these aspects and seek to conceal them from themselves and from others. The superficial personality might be quite jolly and seem happy, an appearance that can be maintained while external conditions remain favourable. But if things go badly wrong – for example, if the persons wealth, possessions or relationships are threatened – a complete change of personality could well manifest. This could take the form of uncharacteristically violent, ruthless or destructive behaviour that might even surprise the person concerned.

What is the source of this Jekyll and Hyde change? Simply the underlying and hidden state of the person’s mind. All that varies from person to person is the degree of denial and repression, or the amount of understanding and insight present in the mind.

These underlying tendencies, like the skeleton of the psychological entity, are not all negative: some are positive and others neutral. They give it shape and form and thus largely determine the way it is. If we continue the analogy, the mind that presents itself to the world is very close to being cosmetic. It concerns itself with image, overt behaviour and survival within its environment. The average person thinks this mind is important, is ‘me’, and identifies with it. But the deeper layers of the mind are more powerful and real, real in the sense of being truer expressions of the person’s energy system rather than pretences.

While we are alive we cling to this shallow mind and generally ignore, repress or try to escape from the deeper layers, particularly the negative aspects. This is why so few people grow or mature psychologically or spiritually. The power and strength needed for growth lies within these depths. By blocking access because we fear the negative component, or our deeper divine component (as discussed in Jung’s understanding of ‘shadow’ in Chapter 9), we block the totality and become superficial, shallow people, cut off from our deeper potential.

When we die, the truth will out because the shallow mind disintegrates. The deeper tendencies are then experienced directly and determine the quality of our experiences in the death bardos. This is a crucial factor to understand because it contains the key to all death training.

However we train, the focus must be on getting into touch with and changing the underlying tendencies. In particular we need to face, come to terms with and integrate negative predispositions. In addition, we need to bring positive tendencies into focus, strengthen them and finally take the mind beyond opposites altogether, through purification and awakening of the enlightened potential.

IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING

Why is training so important? Because all forms of training are designed to affect more than just the superficial mind of this life; that is the rational, cognitive, intellectual mind to which we humans attach so much importance. Some people feel that spiritual training, in order to be worthwhile, should be something exotic, secret, or special. If you are one of those you will be disappointed because training is to do with your immediate day-to-day life situation; the way you live each day as an ordinary person.

WHAT EFFECT DOES TRAINING HAVE?

This mind can easily be changed, and in fact is changing all the time: just think of the typical fluctuations of thought, feeling, opinions and ideas we go through in the course of a day.
We can decide with this mind that we want to be one way or another. Many people make New Year’s resolutions: ‘I will give up smoking, drinking … I will be less angry and impatient … I will be kinder and more polite to strangers ../ Almost invariably these resolutions are broken before the first day of the New Year is out. Why? Simply because there is a deeper level of the mind that is stronger and more set in its direction than the superficial mind, and this deeper level has not participated in the resolution.

This deeper level is the mind of habitual tendencies, which we have cultivated and developed over billions of lifetimes of thinking and reacting egocentrically. So deep and powerful are these tendencies that they have become instinctual. They naturally and automatically come into play and determine how we think, feel and behave. We cannot change this mind simply by taking on new ideas or even beliefs. Something more has to be done, involving several factors:

1) First, we become aware of and acknowledge the existence of the underlying or habitual tendencies. We must accept and come to terms with them. This step is difficult for many people because it challenges or contradicts their self-image. Most self-images contain a good dose of lies we have told ourselves about ourselves. When we start being honest with ourselves we are forced to acknowledge the lies, let go of them and face the unsavoury realities behind them. This means coming to terms with ourselves as we really are, instead of as we have pretended we are. We humans are all a mixture of positive, neutral and negative mind-states. They arise in our minds not only as a consequence of conditioning in this life, but also because of the aeons of conditioning that created our habitual tendencies. There is no point in trying to pretend that negative tendencies are not present.

So the first step is to face and come to terms with ourselves as we are at this moment, and let go of self-blame and perfectionism. Unless we do this, we can do nothing to bring about change in our minds.

2)Next we embark upon some form of training that is going to penetrate and impact upon the habitual tendencies that have the status of instinctual thought/feeling responses. Cognitive, intellectual, rational methods (like brainwashing, analysis, acquiring new beliefs) have little or no effect on this level. We need something deeper.

We need to invoke counter-forces that already exist in the mind and naturally operate at the same or deeper levels as the habitual tendencies.

This process begins with training in mindfulness, which is a faculty that lies more or less dormant in every human mind. Because it has been left dormant, its power and force are not known to us.

As we train in mindfulness, many profound changes begin to take place naturally within the depths of our mind, because this faculty is an expression of our enlightened wisdom nature, which naturally dispels negativity and ignorance when it begins to stir. Just as light dispels darkness.

The development of mindfulness operates as an antidote to the habitual tendencies.

But note what is happening. We are not mindfully formulating conceptual countermeasures to defeat the habitual tendencies. Rather, an unconscious process stirs and comes into being as a consequence of our training in mindfulness. Changes and insights spontaneously arise, sometimes in surprising or unexpected ways or areas of the mind. Mindfulness does not invoke in us a process over which we have rational control. Rather, it awakens deeper wisdom energy beyond our comprehension, and this energy progressively takes over. Increasingly there is a sense of being witness to the unfolding of a deeper, seemingly autonomous process.

This training in mindfulness is the ground that enables all other forms of training to be effective.

3)The third step is to strengthen the liberating forces within the mind while simultaneously weakening the mind’s tendency to grasp. Any training that develops compassion and altruism will do this. All the training methods presented here fall into these categories.

Although the training methods are expressed in conceptual forms – for example, I have used words to describe how you do them, and you use words to get them going in your mind – they are not used as means of directly attacking specific mind states. If we did this we would be working at a superficial level. What we are doing instead is using the training methods to awaken and strengthen the manifestation of the enlightened qualities within. As these are strengthened they automatically weaken egocentric grasping and enhance compassion.

These changes have many beneficial effects in life, and constitute the path to enlightenment. More important from the perspective of death training, they enormously enhance the chances of liberation in the death bardos, where the mind we experience is a much more immediate and direct expression of the habitual tendencies. The superficial mind is no more. In a certain sense we are another person in the bardo: the person who arises directly out of and faithfully reflects, the karmic stream or habitual tendencies.

Once we understand this, it becomes easier to undertake and sustain the long and sometimes seemingly unrewarding training. We learn to look beyond the superficial short-term rewards to the deeper purpose of freeing ourselves forever from the wheel of endless births, deaths and sufferings.

THE MANIFESTATION OF IGNORANCE

We have been observing the mind and seeing how intention is overridden; how we form an intention to focus on the meditation support and how another force then overrides it. We do the exercise so that we truly understand that there are different forces operating in our minds and the one that is strongest is non-rational. The non-rational has the power to overwhelm the rational. This understanding is not theoretical; it arises from the direct observation of our own experience. This is important because it is through direct understanding that we free the mind. We don’t have to struggle and fight to try and figure things out, we free the mind through a very simple systematic method of observing and learning from this direct observation. We are then able to recognise how the mind sustains patterns of distraction. Until we do this we will not be able to free our minds from grasping. The first step is seeing where we get caught up and then understanding exactly how it happens.

We are able to see that we form the intention to rest with the meditation support and that the mind drifts away. But we do not see how or why that inner force causes this to happen. We are able to name something about it. We can say it is habit or conditioned reflex or whatever, but as to the actual moment when that energy takes control, we don’t understand. Or do we? Because we don’t see it happening! Why don’t we see it happening?

Students: Too quick? Subliminal?
It’s too quick, it’s subliminal, and our mindfulness is not strong enough to detect or reveal it. It is as simple as that. If our mindfulness is weak we miss a huge amount of what is taking place. As mindfulness strengthens much of this subliminal activity becomes revealed. We begin to see what has been going on all the time. What this tells us is that mindfulness as it develops is like a light that comes on. It sheds light on inner process and dispels the unknowing. At the moment there are large areas about ourselves that we don’t know about so we can call it unknowing. When we begin to observe the subliminal activity, it is like a light going on because these areas are revealed. This seeing is the dispelling of ignorance. The inherent understanding or knowledge has always been there – the experience of enlightenment is actually part of us at this moment, but it hasn’t manifested because we are trapped in the obscurations. These are mind states that obscure the true condition – the enlightened condition. If it were not for the obscurations we would be enlightened, but because of them we are not enlightened. The obscurations are rooted in ignorance, and the exercise exposes the direct incessant manifestation of ignorance, in our instant, to instant experience.

NOW TO THE TWELVE LINKS OF DEPENDENT ORIGINATION

By teaching the twelve links the Buddha revealed the progressive process whereby we became trapped. In these teachings He gives us the broader picture within which to understand the process of coming into existence, adopting the perspectives of relative and absolute truth.

RELATIVE AND ABSOLUTE

Until we understand relative and absolute we do not understand Buddhist World view. Why is World view either important or valuable? It gives the context within which to make some sort of temporary sense of whatever is happening to us. It gives us a reference point. It is very interesting – over the years I have watched people who do not have a World view. When something goes wrong in their lives, they often fall apart because there is no container within which they can be held. If they do have a world view, even if it’s a partial or an inadequate one, they have some reference point to which they can turn to help them orient in a time of confusion. Hopefully, the Buddhist World view is one which enables us to move from the confusion of the relative world into the experience of the absolute. It does this because it gives us a way of discovering that everything we need is already within us.
What that means is the enlightened mind is, and has always been present, and curiously enough, being experienced. We are experiencing the enlightened mind at this moment, but due to the obscurations we are not recognising it for what it is. Equally, we are not recognising ourselves for what we are therefore we get stuck in the relative, which is the world of illusion, the world of the twelve links, the mind poisons and the six realms. That is the relative and that is what the Buddha called ‘samsara’. Tai Situ Rinpoche took it one step further and said “samsara means going round in circles”. So we are going round in circles simply because we do not recognise and therefore do not understand the nature of our experience.

Some years ago, I read a story in an Indian newspaper about a pack of wolves that had been discovered near some village and one of the wolves was a boy, a boy of about twelve. It was a real Romulus and Remus story. Apparently this boy’s parents had died and the wolves had brought him up. He had been nurtured by a wolf and grown up as a wolf, and the pack accepted him and he ran like a wolf and had his station in the pack. He obviously thought he was a wolf. He would probably have taken it further and said he knew he was a wolf. Even though physically he was obviously not a wolf he had apparently not recognised this fact and he had never been in a situation where anybody had been able to say to him “Actually you are human”. So, as far as he was concerned he was a wolf. That is what the mind can do when it is not presented with the reality of a situation, and the Buddha said this is what has happened to us. We think we are unenlightened. We are running around in samsara because we don’t know otherwise. The process began at some point where we bought into ignorance. And this is the nature of ignorance. It is used to define the situation where we have misunderstood the way things really are.

EGOCENTRIC EXISTENCE AND ACTION

We have misunderstood the nature of our existence and that misunderstanding has taken the form of buying into the idea that there is a separate egocentric entity. When we are egocentric we develop a sense of there being a permanent fixed entity which endures through space and time – a fixed entity. And that we call ‘I’. So at this moment, unless one of you is enlightened, we all have this fixed sense of ‘me’. And ‘I’ am separate from you and ‘I’ am the most important thing. ‘I’ am more important than anything else in the universe therefore ‘I’ experience the universe entirely from my perspective. And ‘I’ don’t particularly care what your perspectives are or the perspective of someone in Japan is – that isn’t part of the way ‘my’ limited existence works. ‘I’ quite naturally see everything in terms of ‘me’. The experience of the ultimate is masked by the belief in egocentric separateness and samsaric involvement commences.

Action within this context is bound to be unskilful because it is based on a wrong assumption, the assumption that there is a self there to do or act. This point was illustrated by the Buddha when somebody said to him towards the end of his life, “What have you done for the last 40 years?” Buddha replied “Nothing.” The questioner responded, “Well that’s not true. I have seen you walking, sitting, sleeping, talking, eating – all those things. You have done a lot of things. I have been around you a lot and I have watched you, I have seen you doing it all.” And the Buddha said, “No, there was never a sense of self acting therefore all the activity was spontaneous, arising in response to the situation.” This is why if you read descriptions of enlightened activity it is said that Buddha activity is always completely spontaneous and appropriate to whatever is there because it arises from enlightened understanding which is not obscured by the idea of self. This may be why people who are very intellectual and caught up in their heads have a reputation for inappropriate behaviour. Their minds become perpetually trapped in egocentricity so they are out of touch with what is going on.

UNDERSTANDING IGNORANCE

In our ordinary experience we can see that people who are caught up in conceptualisation, which is thinking, are out of touch. Being out of touch means not recognising the true nature of a situation. That is ignorance, which is the basis of delusion. There are many levels of not-being-in-touch therefore not-knowing-what-is-going-on and therefore deepening our ignorance. The teaching on ignorance is the most profound of all the teachings in the cycle of 12 links. It lies at the root of all our problems and precedes the Buddha’s first Noble Truth of Dukkha (unsatisfactoriness) Where there is ignorance and where there is action arising out of ignorance there is certain to be Dukkha, because ignorance sets in motion an inevitable series of unfortunate consequences. Once the one is there the other follows. The important thing is to understand that these teachings on ignorance are not just interesting concepts which we talk about and then go home and have tea, they are actually the essence of what is going on in our lives at every moment.

THE MOST POWERFUL MIND POISON

This endless not knowing and ignorance is the most difficult of the mind poisons to purify because by its very nature it is self-conceiving. So we have to uncover it before we can be free from it. If you read accounts of the Buddha’s enlightenment you will see that when He finally vanquished Mara and entered into His final meditation before dawn He rested His mind in Vajra Samadhi. Only then did He free Himself from his final traces of ignorance. So we are looking at the profoundest of the mind poisons that keep us trapped. That is why we come back over and over again to work at it at the most direct experiential level we can manage. We need to recognise that we are faced with it all the time.

How many of you in your meditation have experienced at any time, this heavy lead like drowsiness? Guess what it is…
Student: Ignorance?
Yes. It is the mind marshalling its energy saying “Aha you are going too far – you are in danger of finding out something. I have had enough.” Close down! That gives us a sense of how powerful this force is within the mind. But remember, it is not an external force. It’s not coming upon us from somewhere outside, it is part of the way we are.

Student: How come ignorance is so clever?
That’s an extremely good point, and Trungpa Rinpoche wrote about this. He said ignorance has a certain fundamental cunning, which is the cunning of self-preservation. Perhaps it’s the instinctive cunning of ego-centric self-preservation. But even if this is the case, don’t forget that the ignorance we are talking about is based in our own deep-rooted refusal to face and accept things as they are. So it is our own inherent intelligence that is being hijacked.

Hopefully we now have a better understanding of relative and absolute. The absolute is present all the time. The enlightened condition is present all the time which is why the Buddha said samsara and nirvana are one. They are not separate. But the reason the relative exists is that, being stuck in ignorance, we view the enlightened energy as not enlightened, therefore we experience it as not enlightened.

Student: So there might never have been misunderstanding, or separation at all? We just think there is….
Rob: Maybe. Maybe we are simply trapped in an idea of separateness egocentric existence.

Student: In child development, people like Bowlby and Winnicott made sense of the separate self in terms of the child becoming separate from the mother, developing a sense of ‘I’
Rob: Yes, and that is why I have used the word egocentric instead of ego. Because in developmental psychology we see that the ego needs to develop if the human being is going to function. It’s the reality principle, isn’t it.

Student: Is ignorance time dependent?
Rob: Wonderful question, well time, of course, arises along with illusion doesn’t it? So they are bedfellows. I would think that time arises with ignorance wouldn’t you?
Student: Its rather like a tv screen – you think you see a picture but it’s actually just dots …
Rob: Yes, but definitely time is an illusion. It doesn’t have any reality and is purely dependent on concept. We could say there is chronological time and psychological time. There is a beautiful example of psychological time. Do you remember reading about Louis XIV – Sun King of France? He was terribly grand and everybody had to behave very properly around him. One day one of his dukes had been sent to the far ends of France to do some job and he was supposed to be back before the King at a certain time on a certain day. Well, this duke did whatever he did and came galloping back but it was winter and he got held up – flooded rivers and his horse had a nervous breakdown. Eventually he got back to the palace at Versailles on the very day about two minutes before the audience with the king was due. So he had no option but to hurry into the throne room just as he was – dirty, wet and muddy. As he came in through one door the King swept past and sat down on his throne. The King regarded him coldly and finally said;

“We nearly waited.”

So that’s psychological time – the sense of waiting. And we get this continually. There is external and then there is internal and the internal is often stronger than the external. Take for example what happens if your flight is delayed. There is suddenly the sense of waiting, waiting, waiting. But if you were not waiting for an aeroplane, if you were just at home doing something, your mind would be completely different wouldn’t it? So we can see from that how we create our reality due to the way we view situations.

Student: Direct contact with someone – is there less ignorance at that point?
Rob: Ignorance is weakened when we challenge our grasping and our assumptions. I’ll give you an example. We did a weekend workshop on projection and one of the young guys there was speaking about it and he talked about how he projected onto his girlfriend – and the women here will love this – he projected that she was stupid. So he always used to relate to her as stupid without fully realising it. Now – she wasn’t stupid, she was quite as intelligent as he was, but his projection had kept him caught in a different perception. Anyway one day she got fed up and confronted him. She said, ‘You know you always relate to me as though I am stupid.’ She did it in such a way that he actually realised in that moment that that was precisely what he was doing. The power of that realisation was so great that he was able to let go of his projection, the effect was that he immediately saw her as brilliant shining light. For a moment he let go of the basis of his ignorance, and so it disintegrated. For a moment he saw reality, which was, she was an enlightened being and all that had prevented him seeing that was his ignorance.

That is what we are all doing all the time. We are all constantly projecting onto ourselves and each other an ignorant perception. And we are completely caught up in it. We don’t see each other as enlightened and we don’t realise we are enlightened. That is what is going on. Now it’s not much use being told this because here we still sit trapped in the projection and that is why the Buddha taught the twelve links, because although it is possible to drop the whole thing in an instant, most of us can’t do it. We may have some kind of shock that causes us to let go but then very quickly all the grasping comes back. So the Buddha said “Ok you guys, you’re so thick you are going to have twelve steps.”

I only want to take the first step and a half at the moment because unless you really have a good understanding of ignorance and how it is constantly manifesting in the flow of your psyche the rest won’t make sense, it could be boring and intellectual. When the Buddha says “Out of ignorance action arises” it is the action of egocentric activity rather than spontaneous enlightened response. That is why the Buddha was able to say, “There has been no action since I was enlightened.” Because there was no karmically conditioned sense of there being somebody who was acting. So there can be what we perceive as activity and there can be what we perceive as an actor but for that person, if they are enlightened, neither of those factors is present.

SPONTANEOUS ART

An illustration from the world of art might help us understand the non-egocentric. In some forms of Japanese art, the training is to paint for example, a bamboo, so often that eventually the conceptual mind moves out of the way and it is almost as though the enlightened mind does it. A trained master knows exactly which is which, so if a student becomes very skilful at copying somebody else’s bamboo and presents that as the real thing, the master will glance at it and give the student a whack – this is in the Zen tradition. But when one reaches that moment when the drawing is spontaneous and not pre-meditated, it is recognised as a true art form. Therefore, art here is part of the training for enlightenment. The training is rigorous because ego-grasping always wants to come in to say, “I did it.” Through training and meditation we realise, It did it. And it will only happen when this big ‘I’ is out of the picture. So I think that is a very good example of how we are all faced all the time with the effects of grasping. Grasping is a killer. It always strengthens the obscurations because grasping comes from the sense of self and is the root of our whole problem.

So far we have covered a few basic areas such as why we meditate, what meditation is, and the motivation for meditating. In the first chapter we looked at the method and the effect of meditating and I focused quite a bit on the importance of being clear about the attitude we bring to the meditation and the importance of learning to accept ourselves and come to terms with what is there. I made the point that meditation isn’t technique because if we get into the mindset of thinking of it in that way then we expect to achieve results and to have success, and then we fear failure.

Another problem arises if we work with technique: we work with something which is manipulating the mind, whereas the purpose of meditation is to release the grasping action of the mind so that the inherently enlightened qualities can manifest. That can’t be done through the application of a technique. All technique does is rearrange the existing mind patterns. Although it is not difficult to understand the method in meditation, it is difficult to understand what we need to bring to it in terms of attitude. The basis of that is complete openness. An open acceptance of ourselves the way we are.

That’s easy to say and we hear it a lot in life but what it means is recognising the intricacy of our mind patterns. The extent to which we are continually judging and evaluating the contents of our own inner environment. How the thoughts, the feelings, the sensations, the moods, whatever they are that arise and pass within the mind, are under continual surveillance. That surveillance is there because we want to check it out and know whether it’s what we want or what we don’t want. If it is what we want, we grasp it. We try and hold it. For example, if a mood, or a mind state arises that we like, we want that to stay. We want to be like that all the time. And the mind says, This is how it should be.’ So we try and grasp that but the very act of grasping destroys it. So the joyful clarity of the mind, which is inherent within the non-grasping mind is continually lost through the egocentric grasping action.

Conversely, if mind states arise which we don’t like, we try and push them out. We want to get rid of them. We don’t want to feel them. We don’t want to know them. So repression, suppression, projection, denial, all those psychological mechanisms come into play. These are the means by which we keep ourselves in a continual state of unrest, tension and dissatisfaction. While those non-accepting mind states are present, the mind cannot rest because it is in conflict with itself all the time. If a thought or a feeling arises that we don’t like, then we try and push it out. We then not only have the negative emotional state, but we have the conflict of trying to be rid of it. If, in meditation, we are not aware of this – which most people aren’t – instead of meditating, what we will do is engage in a semi-conscious unseen war against our own mind states. We’ll try and use the meditation as a means of continually avoiding what we don’t want to be with and continually trying to nudge thoughts and feelings out of the mind that we don’t like.

What that will produce, in the initial stages, is tension. A sense of not achieving or of failing. A sense of struggle. If it goes on a bit longer it produces a rigid mind. If it still goes on after that it produces a paranoid mind. So our meditation goes into reverse. We aren’t meditating; we’re just tightening the bolts. Making the mind tighter and tighter.
This is why it is so important to look at this issue of attitude right at the outset. We say to ourselves, This is it. This is what I have to work with. Let’s find out about it. Let’s be clear about it and come to terms with it. A full, unqualified acceptance of the way I am.

We are told that what a growing infant needs most is unconditional love. If we develop this attitude of acceptance, we develop unconditional love towards ourselves. We let go of all the conditions where we accept ourselves if this, or we don’t accept ourselves if that. This then is the basis of compassion. Acceptance produces an extremely resilient mind because inwardly the mind is relaxed and OK about itself. Then whatever arises in the way of thought or emotion can be accepted and worked with comfortably without fear or reactivity. That is why the first issue we always focus on is our attitude.

Motivation then is the next big important thing. Within the Buddhist system, the fundamental motivation is to transform our own minds in order to be able to help others. That is the primary concern. If we can sort out our own minds and develop the inner qualities, then we will be able to help others. Although meditation is often seen as a selfish activity, because we are continually working with ourselves, it is the most altruistic thing we can do. This is because, what is within the mind is what we will express in the environment around us. If our mind is loaded with secretly oppressed negativity, that is what we will inevitably express in the environment around us. There is no option. If however we learn to come to terms with all the negativity and learn to transform it, then what will automatically be projected into the environment will be love, compassion, clarity and wisdom.

The basis of meditation, then, is the method of mindfulness. Bringing the mind into the moment. The first consequence of training in mindfulness will be tranquillity, when the mind begins to settle while being released from the causes of inner turbulence. In Sanskrit, tranquillity is called samatha. Out of the tranquillity arises the capacity to see what is really going on within the mind and this is called penetrating insight. The Sanskrit word is vipassana. This is where the mind, through its clarity which comes about due to tranquillity, develops its inherent power to see and know and understand exactly what is happening within it. Through this we begin to gain true understanding about ourselves.

The big distinction between meditation and learning is that meditation leads to wisdom and compassion because there is a process of true understanding through direct experience and observation of our own mind states. Learning is acquiring information and adding it to the mind. Learning will never penetrate to the depth of meditation because it is simply acquiring new concepts. The more we meditate, the more we realise that concepts are superficial. They only have to do with the rational, conscious, logical intellectual mind. There is a very definite point in meditation where we have to let go of all that. So it’s a case of moving from fixation on the conceptual, rational mind and learning to move inward and trust ourselves and our own instinctive understanding that arises through insight and self-perception.
HIDDEN REEFS

Recognising the intricacy of our mind patterns.

So far we have covered a few basic areas such as why we meditate, what meditation is, and the motivation for meditating. In the first chapter we looked at the method and the effect of meditating and I focused quite a bit on the importance of being clear about the attitude we bring to the meditation and the importance of learning to accept ourselves and come to terms with what is there. I made the point that meditation isn’t technique because if we get into the mindset of thinking of it in that way then we expect to achieve results and to have success, and then we fear failure.

Another problem arises if we work with technique: we work with something which is manipulating the mind, whereas the purpose of meditation is to release the grasping action of the mind so that the inherently enlightened qualities can manifest. That can’t be done through the application of a technique. All technique does is rearrange the existing mind patterns. Although it is not difficult to understand the method in meditation, it is difficult to understand what we need to bring to it in terms of attitude. The basis of that is complete openness. An open acceptance of ourselves the way we are.

That’s easy to say and we hear it a lot in life but what it Cleans is recognising the intricacy of our mind patterns. The extent to which we are continually judging and evaluating the contents of our own inner environment. How the thoughts, the feelings, the sensations, the moods, whatever they are that arise and pass within the mind, are under continual surveillance. That surveillance is there because we want to check it out and know whether it’s what we want or what we don’t want. If it is what we want, we grasp it. We try and hold it. For example, if a mood, or a mind state arises that we like, we want that to stay. We want to be like that all the time. And the mind says, This is how it should be.’ So we try and grasp that but the very act of grasping destroys it. So the joyful clarity of the mind, which is inherent within the non-grasping mind is continually lost through the egocentric grasping action.

Conversely, if mind states arise which we don’t like, we try and push them out. We want to get rid of them. We don’t want to feel them. We don’t want to know them. So repression, suppression, projection, denial, all those psychological mechanisms come into play. These are the means by which we keep ourselves in a continual state of unrest, tension and dissatisfaction. While those non-accepting mind states are present, the mind cannot rest because it is in conflict with itself all the time. If a thought or a feeling arises that we don’t like, then we try and push it out. We then not only have the negative emotional state, but we have the conflict of trying to be rid of it. If, in meditation, we are not aware of this – which most people aren’t – instead of meditating, what we will do is engage in a semi-conscious unseen war against our own mind states. We’ll try and use the meditation as a means of continually avoiding what we don’t want to be with and continually trying to nudge thoughts and feelings out of the mind that we don’t like.

What that will produce, in the initial stages, is tension. A sense of not achieving or of failing. A sense of struggle. If it goes on a bit longer it produces a rigid mind. If it still goes on after that it produces a paranoid mind. So our meditation goes into reverse. We aren’t meditating; we’re just tightening the bolts. Making the mind tighter and tighter.
This is why it is so important to look at this issue of attitude right at the outset. We say to ourselves, This is it. This is what I have to work with. Let’s find out about it. Let’s be clear about it and come to terms with it. A full, unqualified acceptance of the way I am.

We are told that what a growing infant needs most is unconditional love. If we develop this attitude of acceptance, we develop unconditional love towards ourselves. We let go of all the conditions where we accept ourselves if this, or we don’t accept ourselves if that. This then is the basis of compassion. Acceptance produces an extremely resilient mind because inwardly the mind is relaxed and OK about itself. Then whatever arises in the way of thought or emotion can be accepted and worked with comfortably without fear or reactivity. That is why the first issue we always focus on is our attitude.

Motivation then is the next big important thing. Within the Buddhist system, the fundamental motivation is to transform our own minds in order to be able to help others. That is the primary concern. If we can sort out our own minds and develop the inner qualities, then we will be able to help others. Although meditation is often seen as a selfish activity, because we are continually working with ourselves, it is the most altruistic thing we can do. This is because, what is within the mind is what we will express in the environment around us. If our mind is loaded with secretly oppressed negativity, that is what we will inevitably express in the environment around us. There is no option. If however we learn to come to terms with all the negativity and learn to transform it, then what will automatically be projected into the environment will be love, compassion, clarity and wisdom.

The basis of meditation, then, is the method of mindfulness. Bringing the mind into the moment. The first consequence of training in mindfulness will be tranquillity, when the mind begins to settle while being released from the causes of inner turbulence. In Sanskrit, tranquillity is called samatha. Out of the tranquillity arises the capacity to see what is really going on within the mind and this is called penetrating insight. The Sanskrit word is vipassana. This is where the mind, through its clarity which comes about due to tranquillity, develops its inherent power to see and know and understand exactly what is happening within it. Through this we begin to gain true understanding about ourselves.

The big distinction between meditation and learning is that meditation leads to wisdom and compassion because there is a process of true understanding through direct experience and observation of our own mind states. Learning is acquiring information and adding it to the mind. Learning will never penetrate to the depth of meditation because it is simply acquiring new concepts. The more we meditate, the more we realise that concepts are superficial. They only have to do with the rational, conscious, logical intellectual mind. There is a very definite point in meditation where we have to let go of all that. So it’s a case of moving from fixation on the conceptual, rational mind and learning to move inward and trust ourselves and our own instinctive understanding that arises through insight and self-perception.

Reference: Excerpted from Diamond Mind

“I have never experienced death. I know nothing about dying. Now my mother is ill and dying and I have no idea what to do.”
I think this is how most of us would feel. We have such a culture of fear and denial of death that we feel hopelessly inadequate in the face of it.

‘Death is a subject that is evaded, ignored, and denied by our youth-worshipping, progress-oriented society,’ says Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in Death: The Final Stage of Growth. Yet death fills television screens and other media. Somehow there is a split in our psyche: death is part of our violent world out there. But we don’t accept it in here, by coming to terms with our own mortality, by preparing in life to meet death.

The mysteries around death and dying are unnecessary. There is no reason for us not to learn to care for the dying. In fact, there is every reason we should, because caring for those we love, or for any person during their final days, is the last and greatest gift we can offer them. The vast area relating to death and dying is covered in some excellent books by among others, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and Robert Buckmann.

Here are some principles we can follow:

ATTITUDE

We are all going to die. It’s not a failure or a disaster. We will be sad to see someone move on and we will miss them, but that’s samsara, the way of the world, isn’t it?

Modern medicine has made such advances in recent years that many people feel that virtually everything should be curable. Doctors may regard a patient’s death as a failure, and this feeling rubs off onto relatives and friends, resulting in an atmosphere of helplessness and failure around the dying person.

So the first thing we need to do is check our attitude towards death in general, our own death and then the dying person. Learn to accept the situation, come to terms with mortality and let go of sentimental or unrealistic notions that lead us to pretend it isn’t happening. Becoming realistic about death and relaxing our attitude is very liberating, and will result in us naturally finding the strength we need to deal with it. It will also enormously help the dying person.

Perhaps people feel that accepting and coming to terms with death indicate an insensitive and uncaring attitude. It’s as though we should pretend right up to the end, avoid giving the impression that we somehow want the person to die.

A reflection
We begin with attitude. We check our attitude to death:

At the end of a day sit quietly and watch the setting sun. As day fades to night and the light leaves the sky, observe the ending.
‘The day is done; it has ended. The bright promise of dawn blossomed into midday then faded beyond noon. Silently evening crept upon us and now there is an ending. The day has passed.’

Reflect on this. Reflect on the impermanence of it all so that you slowly soften the edges of your mind with reality: nothing lasts. Everything is impermanent. This too will pass.

These reflections may disturb you at first, but slowly they will bring you to accept reality. This is reality; we are impermanent, all of us. Don’t make it into something morbid, or turn your world into a place of grey despair. Rather use it to liberate your intelligence so that you feel freer, able to flow with the great tide of change instead of thinking you should resist and hold everything immovably in place. Watch the clouds; great towering masses that are there, then gone. See the leaves on the trees; green and vibrant in summer, red and gold in autumn, then blown by winter’s wind and gone, leaving the branches bare.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, allow your mind to attune itself to the all-pervading impermanence that surrounds us. Your mind will relax a little, loosen its urgent sense of grasping and, as the Buddha said, sit a little more loosely to life.

If you want to, you can help this process along by listing all the people you knew who have died. As you do this, keep reflecting ‘I knew so-and-so, now they have died, gone. Yes, we die. We pass away. It is part of the human condition.’

You will free your own mind from a lot of unnecessary confusion and morbidity that you would otherwise most likely project onto the dying person. You will be freer to be with that person physically and psychologically in a clear way, able to meet their needs; be there for them in their final hour in a real, human way.

OPENNESS AND HONESTY

Now is the time to be honest; with yourself and with the dying person.

Many people become confused when someone close is diagnosed with a terminal condition. A frequent response is, ‘Don’t tell them.’ And so a web of conspiracy is spun, with all the friends and relatives being told, while the dying person is treated to a barrage of well-meaning but transparent lies and pretence, ‘A few more tests. We don’t really know what’s wrong. Don’t worry, you will soon be up and about. We will have you well and home in no time …’ and so it goes on.

This is cruel and unnecessary. It springs from our culture of denial, which prompts us to deny reality right up to the end.

Supposedly this is for the benefit of the dying person, but in fact it’s rarely so. We are the ones who can’t bear to face the suffering; in this case the suffering of the dying person. Most people don’t realise that we often can’t face other people’s suffering, particularly if they are close to us. It hurts us to see them suffer so we don’t want to allow them their suffering. How do we do this? By shielding them from the truth. So we settle into an uneasy charade, smiling, putting on a brave face, and avoiding the obvious.

The effect of this is to isolate the dying person; that’s why it’s cruel. They usually know they are dying, and will definitely detect the pretence. All those who should be there for them, comforting them, helping them face and come to terms with death, abandon them at the crucial moment. They are thrown into limbo and may not be able to define or articulate exactly what it is that is happening. All they may know is that they are increasingly lonely rejected, confused and frightened.

So tell them the truth if you can. You may need help at this point, and perhaps an experienced counsellor could advise you how best to broach and deal with the subject. Nowadays there an many excellent hospices around the world, with people who are trained to help the dying.

If you have difficulty coming to terms with the situation, you may need to spend a little time reflecting on it and allowing yourself to assimilate and adjust to all the implications. Take the time to do it, but don’t forget the dying person. They don’t cease to be human simply because they are facing death, and who knows? Maybe the best course would be to share your confusion with them if they are mentally and emotionally strong enough to talk about it. If the person is close to you, they might well be distressed at the thought of leaving you, so would welcome the opportunity to talk about it and create the situation where you can help each other.

Some people cannot bring themselves to face death. If this is the case, you don’t force the issue. The best you can do is create a atmosphere of caring and support, so that they feel they are still in contact with the human race.

I remember so clearly my father’s death. He was in hospital dying of cancer, and had lingered on for many weeks. I used to go and see him every evening, and day after day he became weaker and more frail. I tried to raise the subject of dying but he became afraid and flatly refused to talk about it, so I dropped it and turned instead to topics he felt comfortable with. He was in the process of selling a limestone mine and was planning to use the proceeds to build the dream-extension to his house: a billiards room. So we talked about that. He had great difficulty speaking because the cancer had attacked his throat and his vocal cords. But he had a mechanical device my brother had made for him and he could whisper some words. We discussed the place and the size of the room. There was the issue of lighting and the placing of windows. I contacted an agent in town who gave me information on suitable tables and sizes. Every day I would come with some new piece of information, so he would have something to look forward to and occupy his mind. And thus the days and weeks passed.

Finally one evening I went in quite late and the hospital was quiet. I entered his room and he was dozing, propped up on pillows. Something had changed. His breathing seemed precarious and I knew he was losing his grip on life. I found the ward sister and shared my thought with her. She was one of those forthright English matrons not given to mincing matters. “Yes Mr Nairn,’ she said, your father is going to die tonight.’ I returned to his room. He was awake, and the night nurse was talking to him, plumping up his pillows and fussing around doing reassuring little jobs. I stayed a few minutes. We didn’t talk about billiard tables that night and soon I said I would leave. I said goodbye, knowing in my mind that it was final. He glanced up at the nurse who had said something to him, and waved casually to me, as you would to someone you know you are going to see again in a few hours. I left. He died four hours later.

I have often reflected on that ending and strangely enough always felt OK about it. I think the reason is that I understood that his death was his deal. I had to respect the way he wanted it. Maybe it was the only way he could do it, pretending right to the end. It certainly wasn’t my way of doing things, but that wasn’t the point. I had done what I could to help him on his terms and that was what it was all about.

This is perhaps what Elizabeth Kubler-Ross refers to as allowing someone to ‘die in character’.

So although we can identify the best way of doing things, it may not always be possible. We should bear this in mind and not try to force matters.

Akong Rinpoche was once talking about compassion. He said, ‘Accept others as they are. Help beings according to the way they want to be helped.’ So often we want to help others on our terms.

COMMUNICATION: LISTENING, TALKING, TOUCHING

Human psychology is a peculiar business. Mostly it’s about energy, energy flow. If we have problems or difficulties we sometimes seize up and go all quiet, tense, withdrawn. Psychologically this is dangerous because it stops the normal healthy flow of energy, like building a dam across a river. As the dam within us fills, tension and stress increase, causing great suffering. We know about this and instinctively know that it is necessary to let it out. The commonest way of doing this is talking.

People who are approaching death usually need to talk, be spoken to, and be heard in a real and sensitive way. They also respond to touch, the holding of a hand, wiping of a brow. This helps them remain in touch with their life, begin to come to terms with what lies ahead of them, and accept the process as something normal that happens to all of us. Otherwise there could be a growing sense of foreboding, as though some disaster is about to befall them.

When listening, try not to focus on the words only. Try to hear why the person is voicing the words, to understand the feeling behind the words.

Reading selected passages from favourite books – selected by someone who knows the person’s inner life and who is sensitive to where they are at – could contribute to a profound understanding and acceptance of the process.

Often people have unresolved issues in themselves and with others. Help them deal with these. Now may be a good time to help the person deal with issues such as grasping and resentment. Do the resentment exercise with them if they are open to it. (See Chapter 9) If you have unresolved issues with the person, this could be the time to resolve them with sensitivity and compassion. The interesting thing is that doing this will help you as well as the dying person. So a death can be a gift to you as well, helping you to face yourself in a more real way.

Sometimes it is touch that is the communication. Recently an elderly friend of mine was dying. He and his wife never touched although they really cared for one another. Yet somehow his wife couldn’t resist stroking him as he was lying in his hospital bed. Your hand is too cold!’ he protested. And she intuitively, like a little animal, bent down and stroked his forehead with her warm cheek.

SAVOUR THE PAST

Rejoicing is a healing and enriching emotion that we often neglect in life. As death approaches we sometimes allow problematic issues to overshadow us and our relationships. We can reverse this tendency in a beneficial way by reminiscing, by revisiting happy and positive periods with old friends. Talk about old times, acknowledge past happiness, joy, richness. Reawaken the sunny days and balance or banish any present tendency to doom and gloom. This is not to deny and suppress past unhappiness, but to bring balance and happiness into the present. The happy mind is more relaxed, more at peace. The heart can know some gladness in the face of death.

Interestingly, this will echo a spontaneous process that is triggered when we die: the mind re-runs the entire lifetime like a fast-wind movie. So there is value in the principle of re-visiting the past to bring balance to the present. There are many touching stories of old friends doing this, and in the process freeing each other of apparently minor but significant issues from the past. Not infrequently this results in the dying person finally being able to relax, let go and die with their minds at peace.

UNCONSCIOUS?

Many people lie in a coma for long periods. Not all regain consciousness before they die. The question is: can we communicate with them? The answer is yes. There is a great deal of evidence proving that the person is ‘there’, often hanging onto life for strange and unnecessary reasons. Talk to them. Tell them what you think they need to know, make your peace, help them make their peace.

If there is no chance of recovery and the person is still not dying, it may be that they are hanging on out of concern for someone who is still alive. If this is the case and you are the person, you need to talk. Tell them that you are OK, that they don’t have to feel responsible for you. Allow them to go on and face their new future. Tell them you love them and will miss them, but that their passing is not the end of the world. You will survive and they must go on their way.

There are many accounts of this being done, of the dying person giving a sigh of relief and dying peacefully. This was illustrated in an old Tibetan story of Gampopa’s wife.

Gampopa was a famous Tibetan meditator in the 11th century. Before becoming a monk he was a physician; such a good one that his fame spread throughout Tibet. He was, in fact, often known as The Physician. He was also extremely handsome.

When he was relatively young his wife became ill and took to her bed. Gampopa employed all his healing skills to no avail. Her condition deteriorated until it was obvious that she could not recover. She lay, week after week, on her deathbed, in great pain.

Gampopa puzzled over this. ‘I have done all within my power to help her, but her condition is hopeless. She should have died months ago yet she lingers on in pain and great suffering. What can be the cause of this?’ He decided to speak to her about it.

‘Dear wife, you know I have done everything possible to heal your sickness, but have failed. Your malady is incurable. You should have died months ago, yet you cling to life and prolong your pain and suffering. This is causing great anguish to both of us. What can be the cause?’

‘Dear husband, the cause is simple. I love you so much that I cannot bear the thought of some other woman becoming your wife. I will not die and allow that to happen.’

The astounded Gampopa thought about this for a while. ‘My dear wife, this cannot go on. I will make a promise to you. Upon your death I will become a monk and be celibate to the end of my days. No woman will ever take your place.’

His wife gave a great sigh of happiness and died peacefully.

DON’T PLAY GAMES

We often say things like ‘everything is going to be alright’. This is usually not true in life and certainly will be a lie in death if it is suggesting that the dying person is heading into some wonderful state. We don’t know what state their minds are in. We can do our best to create a peaceful environment for them and help them resolve issues, but it is not for us to tell them that wonderful experiences with rainbows and angels lie ahead. Honesty and practicality will help the dying person. If they have some knowledge of the bardo teachings, or if they are meditators, you can remind them to focus and recognise. Discuss what is to come so that they can be clear in their minds. But don’t spin fanciful stories that are of short-term comfort only.

NEGATIVE AND PAINFUL EMOTIONS

Sometimes we can help people to deal with negative and painful emotions that well up as death approaches.

The classic process of dying involves some of the following stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Many other reactions are mixed into this: fear, anxiety, hope and guilt.

This example is from a little book entitled Tuesdays with Morrie, by a young man named Mitch who began visiting an older man who was dying. It illustrates how one might deal with a negative emotion. The meetings were clearly a rich experience for both of them. The author comments on self-pity.

I asked Morrie if he felt sorry for himself.
‘Sometimes in the mornings,’ he said. ‘That’s when I mourn. I feel around my body, I move my fingers and my hands – whatever I can still move – and I mourn what I have lost. I mourn the slow, insidious way in which I am dying. But then I stop mourning.’
‘ Just like that?’
‘I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on all the good things still in my life … Mitch, I don’t allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each morning, a few tears, and that’s all.’

A dying person is experiencing the death of the body, not the mind. So we can help them right to the end, to strengthen and liberate their minds.

FINALLY, COMPASSION

Years ago when I was studying various methods and theories of psychotherapy, I asked Akong Rinpoche what he thought was thel best method of therapy.
‘Compassion,’ he said without a moment’s pause.

I think it’s the same here. It’s good and useful to know theories and techniques that can hone our skills in helping the dying, but it’s worth nothing if we lack compassion and the desire to help. If you have the desire to help and care for others, you will instinctively do what is needed. Even if you feel inadequate, your caring and loving will communicate itself to the dying person as a great comfort and a blessing.

Reference: excerpt from ‘Living, Dreaming, Dying’ by Rob Nairn

“If you want to be happy and become enlightened,
Give up all forms of selfishness and harmful behaviour.
Live to help others. Above all – try to be kind.”

“I am awake”

The Buddha

Reference: excerpt from ‘Living, Dreaming, Dying’ by Rob Nairn