Tag: peace

Patient Acceptance

Today, let’s talk about patient acceptance. It is a fascinating topic as you will discover. If you think about it acceptance has its root in patience and rejection has its root in anger. So in a way, this is a discussion about anger vs. patience.

A patient mind is an immensely creative and flexible mind. But before we can be creative and flexible with any situation, we find ourselves in, we have to accept it first. We can’t come out fighting. Because effectively what we’re doing is fighting reality.

Because things are happening the way they are whether we accept them or not. Say your car broke down. No point getting angry about it. We have to accept the fact that the car broke down. Then we can do something about it.  So I need to accept that without getting freaked out. Happily, peacefully, then I can do something about it. So patience is not about doing nothing.

Being patient means welcoming wholeheartedly, whatever arises and not giving up the idea that things should be other than what they are. Because the point is, that things are not other than what they are. If they were other than what they are then fine, but they’re not whatever is appearing to our mind is just the way it is at the moment. So we have to accept happily.

The flip side of this is that we don’t accept what is happening. Usually, when we don’t accept what is happening, anger comes into play.

The thing with anger is that it exaggerates. Anger has a tendency to make the mountain out of molehill. If we get angry with our partner, for example, or our friend or anyone, we basically build up an image of an intrinsically faulty person, we basically focus on everything that’s wrong with them. And we forget about anything that is good about them, including any kindnesses they may have performed towards us or others.

Geshe-la says every opportunity to get angry is also an opportunity to develop patience. Think about it. Last time you were mindful and watching your thoughts and when the anger was about to raise its ugly head, you tame it right in its tracks. You thought things through, you forgave, you let it go, and so forth. You were able to patiently accept what was instead of what could have been! When that happened you were at peace. Now the trick is to do this every time! I know it’s difficult but you know it is possible.

Now let’s be clear, this is not about suppressing anger because that just becomes passive aggression at some point. And we won’t be able to catch the anger train coming up every time. And if that happens, once the anger has arisen and taken over our mind, you kind of just have to let it pass. There’s not much you can do. Maybe hiding your room or something. I find that exercise tends to help in that case at least for me.

But the real remedy is to stop the anger train before it leaves the station if you will.

And what they say about habits is that if you do something 40 times, it becomes a habit. So you can think okay, next 40 difficult situations and annoying people that come up in my life over the next weeks. So I’m going to try and practice patience 40 times, it’s just an idea. I’m just going to try and practice patience with this person in the situation 40 times and see if my habits change. See if my go-to mind becomes that of patience instead of that of anger. How wonderful!

So that we start to feel like a happier person. When we’re happy, we don’t get angry. Or if we do, then the happiness goes. So generally, if we are able to make ourselves happy, and we’re able to stay calm, contented and peaceful, and basically happy, then, dealing with anger is going to be far easier, it’s not going to rise nearly as often. When it starts in our minds, we’re able to deal with them a lot more easily. Because we’re basically happy. We see actually, I like being happy. I like being happy, and I don’t want to get angry and upset right now. Because I actually prefer to be happy. So we need to know methods to make ourselves happy. And to be able to stay peaceful. Whenever we have love for others when we’re enjoying others when we have compassion.

So one way to be happier within ourselves is to just allow our mind to settle into its own peaceful nature as often as we can even through simple breathing meditation, our mind starts to feel more peaceful. In our hearts, we start to feel more balanced, more peaceful, more contented, and happier. And as I’ve said many times, at that point, it’s very very helpful to think, Okay, I’m actually naturally peaceful, not naturally angry. Even if you have a very strong habit of irritation, annoyance, passive aggression, aggression, anger doesn’t matter. That’s not who you are, that’s still just the delusion of anger. It’s the dirt on your golden nugget if you will. We have talked about this before. Deep down all of us are like this golden nugget, naturally peaceful. But because that nugget is surrounded by the dirt of delusion, we are not able to see the real nature of ourselves. We find ourselves as anything but a naturally peaceful person.

We think actually who I am is a peaceful, happy person. And try and identify with that sense of self because that helps. Well, that allows you really to keep that peaceful feeling going.

How To Uproot Disharmony

I attended a wedding over the long weekend. It was a joyous occasion, full of love. That got me thinking. How can we keep all of our relationship joyous and full of love like it was the first day of a union? If we think about any relationship, it seems that if you remove whatever disharmony there may be, once you remove that, the relationship becomes smooth. You can feel the love in that relationship. So today, I want to talk about how to uproot disharmony in our relationships.

In one of the books, I read a verse that goes when I associate with others, I will consider myself lower and hold everyone supreme.

Just to be clear, we are not talking about being like a doormat when we consider ourselves lower. What we are talking about is not putting ourselves as a center of attention. We usually are me centric if you will. Our needs, wants, and happiness must come ahead of everyone else’s. I love you as long as it does not disturb my comfort is our typical attitude. And we’re now shifting that attitude so that we get over our egocentric self-importance or self-cherishing. Our self-cherishing is where all our delusions come from, all our anger, our attachment, fear, or anxiety, all our selfishness, all our negative actions, all our suffering. So this self-cherishing is the source of our disharmony. That is the reason we are cycling around in what’s called the samsara cycle of impure life, because of this ego mind, grasping at a self or me, that doesn’t exist.

Geshe Kelsang Gyatso says that our self-cherishing, our obsessive self-concern is like a mountain in front of the valley of cherishing others loving others. If you have ever been to Vail Valley from Denver, you know what he is talking about. There is this beautiful valley that you cannot see until you cross the mountain in front of it. Just like that, we cannot see the vast valley of cherishing others because of this mountain of self-cherishing.

Everywhere we look, our mind is polluted by this surface of self-concern. It just alters everything we see. You know, we can’t actually see what’s going on because we’re so obsessed with ourselves. And that’s just reflected in our minds. So why is it? Why is it that we regard ourselves as so precious, but not others? I am just one person others are countless. Why are we so obsessed about me?

One major reason is we’re so familiar with thinking about ourselves, it’s a familiarity of habit. We have been doing it since beginningless time in every life, which is why we’re still circling in suffering. Since beginningless time, we have grasped a truly existent I this is the root of it. So a truly existent I is an I that exists from its own side. But basically, we have two ego minds that are the very kind of root of all our problems. And one is called self-grasping, meaning we’re grasping at a self that exists from its own side.

We think there’s a real me or real I and we think everyone else is not me or either other or self or there are also others or them or you know, him or her or something like that. We have done this experiment before. Show of hand where is the me in this room? Every one of us thinks we are that me and everyone else is something other than me right? Now if the I was inherently existent, it would be the same for all of us. But it’s not.

So it’s only our ignorance that thinks I’m really me, and everyone else is really other. Because I have this sense of real me, I then think that this me is more important than all the other me’s. So I’m more important than you just as simple as that.

So since we regard ourselves or I as so very precious and important, we exaggerate our own good qualities and develop an inflated view of ourselves.

We spend so much time contemplating our real or imagined good qualities that we become oblivious to our faults. It is often so painful to admit that we have faults that we make all types of excuses rather than alter our results view of ourselves, and one of the most common ways of not facing up to our own faults is to blame others. For instance, we have a difficult relationship with someone. We naturally include that it’s entirely their fault. That’s true, isn’t it? They should really change, you know. And then we’ll be so happy. Because you know, it’s hard to change even one person, it’s impossible to change anyone other than ourselves, to be honest, and it’s definitely hard to change everybody.

So we naturally conclude it’s their fault, we’re unable to accept that it is at least partly our fault when we have difficult relationships. So instead of taking responsibility for our actions, or making an effort to change our views or our behavior, get rid of our faults. We argue with them and insist that they must change an exaggerated sense of our own importance thus leading to a critical attitude towards other people making it almost impossible to avoid conflict. So the fact that we’re oblivious to our faults does not prevent other people from noticing them and pointing them out. But when they do we feel that they’re being unfair. So unfair.

This is self cherishing. That arises from self-grasping ignorance. Our inherently existing self. This is the source of all our disharmony. If we learn to remove that, our relationships become easier. Life becomes frictionless. It just flows.

How To Feel Less Frustrated

We have been talking about inner peace and happiness lately. I received a call from my second cousin over the weekend. He said I get all this but life is frustrating. That got me thinking. How about we find a way to feel less frustrated? So today, we are going to talk about how to feel less frustrated.

We have talked about how it is possible to feel happy all the time. That we have this Buddha nature our golden nugget if you will. That our root mind is naturally peaceful. But even then, we get this unhealthy thoughts, the thoughts that make us unhappy, thoughts that get us into negative states of mind. What we are calling delusions. Anger, jealousy, frustration, and so forth. Usually, these delusions arise from inappropriate attention. What does that mean you ask? Well, it means focusing our attention on a faulty situation or in a faulty way. And when our mind is not thinking these negative thoughts, our mind is peaceful.

So key it seems to me is to find a way to identify our delusions and figure out a way to get rid of them. Sounds simple right? The book How To Transform Your Life actually deals with the delusion of aversion that includes frustration including the feeling of being overwhelmed and feeling of not being able to accept what is going on. Have you ever had a day where you feel like you were fighting all day? Actually, reminds me of a conversation I had with one of my tenants. I had a dentist as a tenant in our office building 20 years or so ago. Before he left for the day, usually he would stop by my office just to chat. I would ask how his day was and at least once a week, he would say they won today Nirav. You see, for him, it was always a battle between him and his patients. He was always in a reactive mode. If they said X, he would say Y, and so on.

So when we react in this reactive mode, with the aversion, oh, no, no, I hate this. I don’t like this. We’re fighting it. At that point, we have already lost because we’re fighting, right? So we go around, not liking things a lot and not liking people a lot. And actually, it just makes us unhappy. And it’s not in accordance with reality. It’s a distorted way of thinking about ourselves and the world and the people in the world, what’s going on.

So in general, we can understand that frustration, dislike, hatred, aversion, all of them just different names for anger by the way; is one of the most common and destructive of our delusions and afflicts us almost every day. The reason why there are so many problems in our world. Imagine if the world if no one ever got upset, angry, or hated each other, then many of the world’s problems would disappear, like immediately right? There wouldn’t be a war in Europe, there would be wouldn’t any fighting, and there wouldn’t be any people killing each other harming each other, yelling at each other. All, that would go away if people liked each other.

To solve the problem of anger, we need to first recognize it, within our own mind, and acknowledge how it’s harmful. Anger is really when we just don’t accept something we don’t like. That’s it. Now there are degrees of it from mild irritation to grumpy to full-throttle rage. It’s all on the same spectrum. In the simplest terms, anger is a deluded mind that focuses on an animate or inanimate object. It then exaggerates its bad qualities. And as a result, it wishes to harm it. Take our partner for example. They have a lot of good qualities otherwise we would not be together. But they did not take the trash out and all of a sudden, we just see all the faults they have and exaggerate and get angry at them. We forget about all the good qualities of why we are together. We don’t think that maybe they were busy with other things or they may have something going on that occupied their mind and so on. Nope, we feel wronged and get angry. This is an unpeaceful state of mind.

At that point, the idea is not to accept what is going on in our minds but practice patience. We need to practice patient acceptance of the situation. If we feel bad, we accept that it is there and realize that whatever is arising in our mind is our delusion and that it’s not us. Remember the golden nugget we keep talking about? We need to realize that this is just the dirt on that golden nugget and that we are that peaceful person. Now once the delusion arises it is difficult to push back. So the idea is to get in just when is arising before it develops and starts exaggeration and distortion. Because once the anger is here full-blown, there is nothing we can do about it. So that is why we have to get in early and put our minds somewhere else. So we don’t put exaggeration into it. So for example, in the case of taking out trash, instead of thinking, okay, they never do this. We get in there we think okay, let me just think five good things about this person. This is an incredibly practical way to stop full-blown irritation and anger arising, we think five good things about that person. Know that I can’t think of five good things right now. Okay, try three. Okay, three. No, can’t even think of three good things right now. Okay. Well, in that case, try one, and well, I can’t even think of one well make one up. You know, the dog loves him. That’s enough. Anything to like to derail the anger train, you know, just not let it get full steam ahead. Because it’s based on that exaggeration, or we call it inappropriate attention. We could think I don’t have to exaggerate, distort, or make this person intrinsically evil. And if we learn to do that, then there’s no repression required. The anger just doesn’t arise in the first place.

How To Access Peace Within Us

We have talked about in the past that within every one of our hearts exists this potential for total freedom from ignorance, complete bliss, and pure happiness, known as our Buddha nature. So today, let’s talk about how to access that peacefulness within us.

We need to learn to experience that nature. We are not able to because we have been habitually caught up with our delusions such as our greed, our anger, and our attachment and we think that’s me. But that’s not us. Those are our delusions.

They are defilements of our minds, our tendencies, our habits, but that is not us. They may be ruining our life but that is not us.

Buddha gives an example of seawater. We can all agree that the sea water is salty. It is salty water. He says no. Water is water. It is the salt that makes it salty. And nowadays, science tells us that we can have a desalination plant and the water is no longer salty! So the water itself is water. It is the salt that made it salty.

In the same way, it’s possible to get rid of the delusions from our mind and leave that clear, pure nature of our mind, which is already there. It’s just that the delusions are making it salty, but it doesn’t mean our mind is salty.   

By nature, we are pure. Our nature is completely peaceful, joyful, and even actually, blissful.

We all have Buddha says our continuously residing minds. Which is the deepest level of awareness. It is completely pure. It is always there. All other minds come and go. So our continuously residing mind is like a clear sky. And delusions and all other conceptions are like clouds that temporarily arise.

We must remember that all the time. That deep down, we are a peaceful person, a joyful person, a blissful person. It’s just that we have all this sand or dirt on top of our golden nugget. But it is a golden nugget and not some dirty rock.

So, therefore, the first step to accessing our pure nature is meditation so that our mind can settle down to its pure nature.

So we are letting the waves die down by focusing on the breath. We’re allowing the waves of our delusions to just die down. This is all we do, to begin with, we just don’t follow our delusions. The way we don’t follow our delusions is by following our breath instead, can only actually our mind can only single-pointedly focus on one thing at a time.

So we like to think we can multitask and stuff. But generally, what’s happening in our mind is just moving all over the place all day exhausting. Trying to do many things at once. Our mind is only actually ever doing one thing at a time. But just moments before it does the next thing in the next thing. Our mind is very much in the nature of the movement. And this is like, go back to the ocean analogy. It’s causing all that disruption. Just the fact that we can’t focus on one thing very well. Sometimes we can. But insofar as we can make lots of things at once, we can’t. But when we focus on breath, then we are focusing single-pointedly as we can one point of focus on the breath. At that point, we’re not projecting any of our other deluded thoughts. You know, what happens to a thought when we stop thinking about it? They go away.

Our delusions are just thoughts. When we stop thinking, those deluded thoughts subside, like the waves sliding into the ocean, that just happens. And we discover that we are actually peaceful, that our mind is actually peaceful, relatively to begin with, right, because it’s quite hard to let our mind completely let go of all the delusions dissolve into this endless deep bliss, okay, that takes some time. But we get a little bit of a taste of the waves dying down, to use the other metaphor, the clouds, clearing a little taste of the blue sky.

And now with meditation, we’re learning to master our mind, control our mind, which is absolutely essential, because if we don’t master our minds, our mind is always going to be in control of us. And when I say our mind, I mean, our delusions are going to control us because they’re what’s running the show at the moment. Right? So if we want to experience peace and happiness, we need to learn to master our minds.

And first step is just making a decision to stay with the breath. We can do a lot based on our decision. If we decide to do something, then there’s every chance we can do that thing. If we don’t decide to do it, then of course, you know, if we just kind of enter our breathing meditation, quiet half-heartedly, and think, Okay, it just seems like something quite peaceful. But we’re not really haven’t made any strong decision to stay with the breath, then we’re going to naturally follow every thought that comes up. Because that’s what we do. That’s what we are used to doing. We’re used to just following every single thought that comes up. But no we’re going to make a decision. I’m going to focus on my breath.

And if a thought comes, we say OK, we are going back to focusing on our breath. If we do this for a while, then what happens is that as the mind starts to settle down, even if it’s just a little bit, turbulence, and delusions, start to die down even a little bit, and we start to sense that depth in that space, that ocean, clarity within our mind, continuously residing, mind our Buddha nature potential, we start to just glimpse it. And that’s why we need a glimpse enough for us to then change the object of meditation from the breath to the peace itself. Again, focus on this peace, I’m going to enjoy this peace the abide by this peace. And focus on that single-pointedly.

When our delusions are not manifesting strongly, our mind is naturally relaxed, actually peaceful, and naturally happy.

Developing Compassion – Affectionate Love

We have talked about how it is best to try and develop compassion towards all living beings. It is easy to develop compassion towards people in our immediate circle (our family, our friends, etc.). But it is much harder to develop compassion towards someone we do not know. Ans harder still for someone in a faraway place. It’s like this when we hear about a natural disaster half a world away, we feel bad for sure but not enough to do something about it and help them. It happens in our region, we actually want to do something about it—maybe we send some money or consumables, etc. If that happens in our neighborhood, we roll up our sleeves and help as many people as we can. So how do we develop the same high level of compassion for all living beings?

Well, before we develop compassion toward everyone, we first need to have a love for them. If we have a love for someone in our hearts, developing compassion towards them becomes easy. So how do we develop love towards other random people and even people who do not care for us? Well, let’s start with types of love. There are three types of love. Affectionate love, cherishing love, and wishing love.

Here is from the book Universal Compassion: We can understand these by considering the following example. If a mother is reunited with one of her children after a long separation, she is very happy and feels great affection for her. This special feeling of affection is affectionate love. Out of affection, the mother considers her child to be very precious and wants to take special care of her. This special feeling of caring is cherishing love. Because she has affectionate love and cherishing love for her child, if she sees that she is unhappy she immediately wishes to restore her happiness. This wish for others to be happy and to help them to achieve happiness is wishing love.

So let’s break this down. In simplest terms, affectionate love is to like someone. If we are in a family and we have affection towards each other, life would be much smoother. Similarly, if we have affection towards our community, we will try to make sure that everyone in our community is free from suffering. This affectionate love brings harmony and peace to the community. The easiest way to develop affectionate love is to think about how no one wants to suffer. We know that we don’t want to have any suffering in life. Similarly, no one wishes to suffer for themselves. Once we understand that all beings want to be free from suffering, we will develop affectionate love toward them. A warm feeling in our hearts towards them. It is difficult to practice this by trying to show affectionate love towards everyone at once. So one should start by showing affectionate love towards a select few that would be easier – members of your family or close friends. Then expand the circle once you are comfortable.

Now, we need to be careful because a lot of times what people call love is more like attachment. For these people more the “love” increases, the more desirous attachment they develop. If the object of their “love” even talks to someone else, they get jealous or angry. This is not love. This is the attachment. Real love does not make one angry. So what is affectionate love? In the book How To Transform Your Life, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso outlines: when from the depths of our heart, without attachment, we feel very close, warm, and happy towards someone, this is affectionate love. It makes our mind peaceful and balanced, free from anger and attachment. Thus it is called “equanimity”.

Developing equanimity is like plowing a field—clearing our minds of the rocks and weeds of anger and attachment. That will make it possible for true love to grow. So how do learn to develop affectionate love? One way to develop this is to make an effort to be happy to see everyone. Whenever we see someone, we should be happy to meet them and try to generate a warm feeling towards them. If we are starting a meeting just before we get into the meeting room, we imagine all the people who are going to be in the meeting and try and generate a smile on our faces.

There are many benefits of meditating on affectionate love. Nagarjuna a great Indian scholar said that the biggest benefit of meditating on affectionate love for just one moment is that we accumulate greater merit than giving food three times to all the hungry people in this world! How wonderful!