Buddhism is all about losing

Yet really there’s nothing to lose

I recently attended talks in France by Khandro Rinpoche where she spoke about renunciation in Buddhism. Khandro Rinpoche is a brilliant woman master in the Tibetan tradition who lives in northern India and, for me, her words are dynamite. They really shake me up and get me to think. My article is inspired by what she and other Tibetan masters have said on this subject.

Buddhism is all about losing. To put it another way, we could say that all Buddhists are losers!

Photo: stockstudioX.istock

When a Buddhist attends a talk, sits in meditation or does a retreat, he or she is not hoping to gain or achieve anything. There is no expectation of getting something you long for but don’t have, in fact there’s no hope involved at all. The reason for that is because we have it all already. Mental peace is a natural quality of the mind and is always here, we just need to tap into it. Clarity, love, confidence and all the other states we might be looking for are already here, integral to our minds and hearts and nowhere else. In the Buddhist view, the mind is much vaster than thoughts and emotions alone; it is naturally pure and luminous and full of positive qualities. So instead of hoping to gain something from Buddhism, people attend talks, meditate and do retreat in order to lose.

This sounds very counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? There aren’t many things we ever do with the explicit intention of losing something. Our habit is always to want more and better. And yet Buddhists do the opposite: meditation is about letting the mind declutter itself, listening to talks is about releasing the tight grip we have on our own opinions, doing retreats is about dropping habits and familiar routines.

The entire Buddhist path, by which I mean all the different methods taught and the insights they bring, is designed to eliminate everything that gets in the way of our realizing that what we are looking for is within us always. Traditionally one talks of hindrances and obscurations, ignorance and misunderstandings, demons and obstacles, and so on; but whatever names we use, and however we depict them, they are actually nothing other than the mental habits and emotional reactions that cause constant and chronic cognitive distortion. They are what gets in the way of our seeing reality as it is and of our being content with that.

Enlightenment or nirvana, that great mental peace and wisdom, is not something we can bring about by doing anything in particular. In fact, it’s not a state that can be produced at all. It is ‘unconditioned’, meaning it’s beyond causation, beyond time, beyond words and language, and it is present and accessible in every moment. All we need to do is get rid of what’s in the way. And since we have the enlightened potential in us in every moment, there is nothing fundamental that can be lost.

A good way of illustrating what this is about is to think of a dirty T-shirt. Say your son plays rugby and he comes home with a filthy T-shirt soaked in mud. In order to clean it you apply certain methods including water, soap and a lot of rubbing, and the result of the washing process is a dazzling white T-shirt. But you have not produced or created a new white T-shirt, what you have done is separated out the white T-shirt from the dirt. Washing anything is about getting rid of the dirt so the original article becomes visible again. That’s what the Buddhist path does with the brightly shining mind in the depths of our heart: clear away everything that prevents us from seeing it in all its glory.

With this perspective we naturally want to dissolve all that mental stuff, all those many thick layers that shield us from raw reality. That’s what Buddhists want to lose. But this point is not always clear to people, and even when it is clear it’s notoriously difficult to put into action. That’s why so many Buddhists side-step the inner work that this requires and opt for an easier route: giving up possessions and material things instead.

This confusion between inner and outer extends to the way we view monastics. In the eyes of the general public, monks and nuns are the epitome of the Buddhist way of life – a life of simplicity and poverty dedicated to selfless service for the whole community; a life of renunciation.  They show us what it looks like to renounce worldly ambitions and the entanglements of family and career. And their soft smiles and serene faces demonstrate the peace of mind we attain when we live in this way. But we should not consider appearances alone; if we look more deeply we will know that giving up fashionable clothes to don a monastic robe does not automatically mean that a person has actually given up attachments and cravings to worldly possessions. Behind the uniform his or her mind might still be whirling with desire and jealousy, anger and pride. Giving up on fashion can, of course, be a first step to leading a simpler life but only when it’s the outer expression of an inner shift in the mind, so that worldly cravings are much reduced and constantly worked on. Monks and nuns are inspiring when their simple life reflects the natural simplicity of mind.

Very few Westerners choose to become monks or nuns, however, so the focus has shifted to what the Buddhist way of life looks like for householders. If the monastic ideal is attained by renouncing worldly life, how does the idea of renunciation apply to me if I want to continue working and raising a family? In fact, if I am to be a Buddhist without giving these things up, does renunciation apply at all? It’s very tempting to imagine that all we need to do to be a lay Buddhist is meditate for a few minutes each day and stop killing spiders and mosquitos. The rest of our life we can leave intact. Surely, there is nothing else that laypeople need to lose or give up.

Renunciation is encouraged in Buddhism for both monastics and laypeople, and it’s not about giving up things as such – giving away your clutter and old clothes, for instance, as some of us might do quite happily and with some relief. Possessions and things are not the problem, they are not what we need to worry about. The Buddha did not discourage householders from being wealthy or powerful, what he recommended was that we use that wealth and power wisely and well. In this respect Buddhism does not fit the Western tendency to associate the spiritual life with a life of material poverty.

What the Buddhist path is primarily there to do is help us give up the complications of our minds. The target is our entanglement with things not those things themselves. All the methods that Buddhism proposes are intended to simplify our minds, and if we remember that goal then whenever we apply a method it will hit the target. If we get stuck on the method itself we will be missing the point. For example, if we think meditation is about taking up a particular posture, chanting certain words and maintaining a strict timetable for the sessions, but we neglect to develop our awareness both on and off the cushion, then ultimately we are wasting our time.

The Buddhist teachings on impermanence and change, on suffering and pain, and on the endless cycle of karma and rebirth are designed for one main thing: to make us examine the way we live and realize how exhausting and pointless that is. As long as we are attracted to the pleasures that sense objects bring, and as long as we allow ourselves to be distracted by experiences and carried away on waves of emotion, we end up losing the plot. We allow the meaning of life to slip through our fingers.

The fundamental mistake we make, says Khandro Rinpoche, is that we are attracted to movement. Both physically and mentally we cannot stay still, we are constantly looking for change and movement.  The Buddha’s teachings encourage us to become aware of that tendency and to see for ourselves how we are spinning round within movement. This might be movements of our body, it might be the buzz of urban life. It could also be flicking from one TV channel to another or surfing one website after another. And within our minds it can be the endless torrent of changing thoughts and feelings that make us feel alive. The whirlpool of movement we find ourselves in is experienced as so forceful and enticing that we can’t extricate ourselves from it even if we wanted to. We live in a state of perpetual distraction, disconnected from our deeper selves.

Meditation

The Sanskrit word for meditation literally means ‘abiding’, so by definition meditation is a way to find stillness. Meditation is an opportunity to slow down, physically and mentally, and take a break from the noise. Gradually there will be fewer thoughts and feelings arising in our minds, and we begin to see the ones that do arise from a place of stillness. We are not so caught up in them, carried away by them and engrossed by them; there is some mental space that is free of them and that is quiet and still. That is the start of renunciation on the mental level. Of course, anyone who has tried this will know it’s not that easy because our habit of looking for distractions is so strong. I know that sometimes I personally want distraction; it’s an escape, an avoidance strategy, and if I’m honest it’s not always something I really want to change at all.

That’s why simplicity is a nice idea but one of the hardest things to follow. Our minds are constantly fidgeting, looking for something else, something different; we cannot bear to stay still for long. In what is called worldly life we busy ourselves with the things we find stimulating or rewarding or pleasurable, and in the process we lose sight of the big picture and lose our sense of priorities. We are dizzy with excitement like screaming people going round and round on a ferris wheel, but if we look hard we will see that all of that gets us nowhere.

The problem, though, is that we take this same tendency along with us as excess baggage when we decide to follow a spiritual path, so instead of busying ourselves in our jobs and our homes and at the fairground we busy ourselves with Buddhism instead. We read this book and listen to that youtube master, we go on retreats and follow courses, we recite mantras and learn prayers by heart, maybe we do some good deeds as well. The intention is to abandon mundane goals and become a good Buddhist but most of us do not change our spots. Our inability to simply rest and be naturally open and spacious hangs around us like an old cloak.

One of Khandro Rinpoche’s students decided to do a three-year solitary retreat. When she spoke with her after several months of retreat Rinpoche was astounded to hear that her student had started an online tutorial on how to play a traditional one-stringed Chinese instrument. She had actually begun this course while she was supposed to be in retreat! Buddhist retreats are all about setting boundaries in terms of physical location, discipline, silence and what one focuses on with the mind.  Pursuing distractions and entertainment is definitely not part of the deal. Doing so will dissipate the mind and the power of the mind, and thus prevent the practices from bringing about their intended results.

This example is not an isolated incident; all ordinary people are looking for distraction most of the time. Rinpoche confronts long-time practitioners of Buddhism about this fundamental restlessness because she can see that despite years of meditation the tendency is still there. It’s so easy, and so common, to know the Buddhist teachings in theory, and to go through the motions of the practices, and still not apply the teachings and practices to our mindset. Any Buddhist will have heard about change and impermanence, for example, but has that truth penetrated their being with a sense of urgency, recognizing there is no time to waste?  Most of us might spend ten minutes on the cushion, or thirty minutes maybe, but the other 23 hours and x minutes of the day our minds are going round and round in the same old way, on a loop. We think we are spiritual people doing all the right things, but we are missing the point.

Some of us make plans: ‘I will meditate every day once this crisis at work is over.’ ‘I will do meditation retreats once I have retired.’ ‘I will go to Nepal or Thailand one day so I can meditate in peace.’ I have thought like this; have you? Tomorrow never comes. We only have today, and today is when we have to start. And meditation can be done just as well on our own bed or sofa as in a holiday rental in Phuket. Mindfulness and awareness can only be cultivated right now, not in an imaginary future time.

So what is it exactly that we could usefully give up as lay Buddhists in the modern world? Khandro Rinpoche answers this question in three pithy points. We need to develop:

·       a revulsion to hearing but not knowing

·       a revulsion to doing but not accomplishing, and

·       a revulsion to being caught in the movement.

If we do this then all the practices and rituals of Buddhism will bear fruit; if we don’t then whatever meditation or retreat we do will only disappoint.

Rinpoche illustrates this with the story of some of her students during Covid lockdown who, for the first few months, took advantage of the situation and spent more time on their Dharma practice. But after this the restlessness set in. The students would complain about isolation, death, confusion, or not knowing what was really going on, and they would ask her: what can we do? These were people to whom she had taught meditation and general Dharma for twenty or thirty years, and even after all that time they felt helpless and panicked in the face of crisis. What benefit had their meditation actually brought them if it didn’t help them in a time of need? What is getting lost in translation? Precisely this one point: it’s about working with our own minds – with our thoughts and reactions.

The next time we experience something like lockdown, we could therefore make full use of the time by being content staying in one place, by dropping the yearning for entertainment, by accepting that illness, pain and death are all a natural part of life, and by clearing our heads of fears, anxieties and more. The good news is that Buddhism offers ways to do all of this, and all we have to do is apply those methods to our minds.

In the end, any practising Buddhist has one important choice to make. They need to ask themselves the question: do I just want to become a good Buddhist, going through the motions and doing everything just so, or do I want to wake up? If enlightenment is what we seek, there is no other way than shedding our personal, excruciating brand of complication.

Join me online for a free 45-minute talk on renunciation in Buddhism. It’s called ‘How sad is your love?’ and will be live on 8th June at 11am CET. Book here:

https://prajnaonline.org/teaching-event/the-way-of-the-great-perfection