Actively Creating
Peace
by Pema Chödrön
Suppose there were a place we could go to learn the art of peace, a sort
of boot camp for spiritual warriors. Instead of spending hours and hours
disciplining ourselves to defeat the enemy, we could spend hours and hours
dissolving the causes of war.
Such a place might be called
bodhisattva training — or training for servants of peace. The methods we learn
at the bodhisattva training might include meditation practice and they might
also include the six paramitas — the six activities of the servants of
peace.
One of the main challenges of this
camp would be to avoid becoming moralistic. With people coming from all nations,
there would be many conflicting opinions about what was ethical and what was
unethical, about what was helpful and what was not. Very soon we'd probably need
to request the most tamed and awakened people there to lead a course on
flexibility and humor!
In his own way, Trungpa Rinpoche
devised such a course for his students. He'd have us memorize certain chants,
and a few months after most of us knew them, he'd change the wording. He'd teach
us specific rituals and be extremely precise about how they should be done. Just
about the time we began criticizing people who did them wrong, he'd teach the
rituals in a completely different way. We would print up nice manuals with all
the correct procedures, but usually they were outdated before they came off the
press. After years of this sort of training, one begins to relax one's grip. If
today the instruction is to put everything on the right, one does that as
impeccably as one can. When tomorrow the instruction is to put everything on the
left, one does that with one's whole heart. The idea of one right way sort of
dissolves into the mist.
When we are training in the art of
peace, we are not given any promises that, because of our noble intentions,
everything will be okay. In fact, there are no promises of fruition at all.
Instead, we are encouraged to simply look deeply at joy and sorrow, at laughing
and crying, at hoping and fearing, at all that lives and dies. We learn that
what truly heals is gratitude and tenderness.
The first five transcendent actions
are generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, and meditation. The very words
generosity, discipline, patience, and exertion may have rigid connotations for
many of us. They may sound like a heavy list of "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts." They
might remind us of school rules or the preaching of moralists. However, these
paramitas are not about measuring up. If we think they are about achieving some
standard of perfection, then we'll feel defeated before we even begin. It is
more accurate to express the paramitas as a journey of exploration, not as
commandments carved in rock.
GENEROSITY
The first paramita is generosity, the
journey of learning how to give. When we feel inadequate and unworthy, we hoard
things. We are so afraid — afraid of losing, afraid of feeling even more
poverty-stricken than we do already. This stinginess is extremely sad. We could
look into it and shed a tear that we grasp and cling so fearfully. This holding
on causes us to suffer greatly. We wish for comfort, but instead we reinforce
aversion, the sense of sin, and the feeling that we are a hopeless
case.
The causes of aggression and fear
begin to dissolve by themselves when we move past the poverty of holding back.
So the basic idea of generosity is to train in thinking bigger, to do ourselves
the world's biggest favor and stop cultivating our own scheme. The more we
experience fundamental richness, the more we can loosen our grip.
This fundamental richness is available
in each moment. The key is to relax: relax to a cloud in the sky, relax to a
tiny bird with gray wings, relax to the sound of the telephone ringing. We can
see the simplicity in things as they are. We can smell things, taste things,
feel emotions, and have memories. When we are able to be there without saying,
"I certainly agree with this", or "I definitely don't agree with that", but just
be here very directly, then we find fundamental richness everywhere. It is not
ours or theirs, but is available always to everyone. In raindrops, in blood
drops, in heartache and delight, this wealth is the nature of everything. It is
like the sun in that it shines on everyone without discrimination. It is like a
mirror in that it is willing to reflect anything without accepting or
rejecting.
The journey of generosity is one of
connecting with this wealth, cherishing it so profoundly that we are willing to
begin to give away whatever blocks it. We give away our dark glasses, our long
coats, our hoods, and our disguises. In short, we open ourselves and let
ourselves be touched. This is called building confidence in all-pervasive
richness. At the everyday, ordinary level, we experience it as flexibility and
warmth.
When one takes a formal bodhisattva
vow, one presents a gift to the teacher as a focal point of the ceremony. The
guidelines are to give something that's precious, something one finds difficult
to part with. I once spent an entire day with a friend who was trying to decide
what to give. As soon as he thought of something, his attachment for it would
become intense. After a while, he was a nervous wreck. Just the thought of
losing even one of his favorite belongings was more than he could bear. Later I
mentioned the episode to a visiting teacher, and he said perhaps it was the
opportunity for that man to develop compassion for himself and for all others
caught in the misery of craving — for all others who just can't let
go.
Giving material goods can help people.
If food is needed and we can give it, we do that. If shelter is needed, or books
or medicine are needed, and we can give them, we do that. As best we can, we can
care for whoever needs our care. Nevertheless, the real transformation takes
place when we let go of our attachment and give away what we think we can't.
What we do on the outer level has the power to loosen up deep-rooted patterns of
holding on to ourselves.
To the degree that we can give like
this, we can communicate this ability to others. This is called giving the gift
of fearlessness. When we touch the simplicity and goodness of things and realize
that fundamentally we are not stuck in the mud, then we can share that relief
with other people. We can make this journey together. We share what we have
learned about taking down sunshades and unlocking armor, about being fearless
enough to remove our masks.
DISCIPLINE
To dissolve the causes of aggression
takes discipline, gentle yet precise discipline. Without discipline, we simply
don't have the support we need to evolve. What we discipline is not our
"badness" or our "wrongness". What we discipline is any form of potential
escape from reality. In other words, discipline allows us to be right
here and connect with the richness of the moment.
It's not the same as being told not to
enjoy anything pleasurable or to control ourselves at any cost. Instead, this
journey of discipline provides the encouragement that allows us to let go. It's
a sort of undoing process that supports us in going against the grain of our
painful habitual patterns.
At the outer level, we could think of
discipline as a structure, like a thirty-minute meditation period or a two-hour
class on the dharma. Probably the best example is the meditation technique. We
sit down in a certain position and are as faithful to the technique as possible.
We simply put light attention on the out-breath over and over through mood
swings, through memories, through dramas and boredom. This simple repetitive
process is like inviting that basic richness into our lives. So we follow the
instruction just as centuries of meditators have done before.
Within this structure, we proceed with
compassion. So on the inner level, the discipline is to return to gentleness, to
honesty, to letting go. At the inner level, the discipline is to find the
balance between not too tight and not too loose — between not too laid-back and
not too rigid.
Discipline provides the support to
slow down enough, and be present enough, so that we can live our lives without
making a big mess. It provides the encouragement to step further into
groundlessness.
PATIENCE
The power of the paramita of patience
is that it is the antidote to anger, a way to learn to love and care for
whatever we meet on the path. By patience, we do not mean enduring — grin and
bear it. In any situation, instead of reacting suddenly, we could chew it, smell
it, look at it, and open ourselves to seeing what's there. The opposite of
patience is aggression — the desire to jump and move, to push against our
lives, to try to fill up space. The journey of patience involves relaxing,
opening to what's happening, experiencing a sense of wonder.
A friend told me how, in her
childhood, her grandmother, who was part Cherokee, took her and her brother on
walks to see animals. Her grandmother said, "If you sit still, you'll see
something. If you're very quiet, you'll hear something." She never used the word
patience, but that is what they learned.
EXERTION
Like the other paramitas, exertion has
a journey quality, a process quality. When we begin to practice exertion, we see
that sometimes we can do it and sometimes we can't. The question becomes, How do
we connect with inspiration? How do we connect with the spark and joy that's
available in every moment? Exertion is not like pushing ourselves. It's not a
project to complete or a race we have to win. It's like waking up on a cold,
snowy day in a mountain cabin ready to go for a walk but knowing that first you
have to get out of bed and make a fire. You'd rather stay in that cozy bed, but
you jump out and make the fire because the brightness of the day in front of you
is bigger than staying in bed.
The more we connect with a bigger
perspective, the more we connect with energetic joy. Exertion is touching
in to our appetite for enlightenment. It allows us to act, to give, to work
appreciatively with whatever comes our way. If we really knew how unhappy it was
making this whole planet that we all try to avoid pain and seek pleasure — how
that was making us so miserable and cutting us off from our basic heart and our
basic intelligence — then we would practice meditation as if our hair were on
fire. We would practice as if a big snake had just landed in our lap. There
wouldn't be any question of thinking we had a lot of time and we could do this
later.
These actions become the means of
shedding our defenses. Every time we give, every time we practice discipline,
patience, or exertion, it's like putting down a heavy burden.
MEDITATION
The paramita of meditation allows us
to continue this journey. It is the basis for an enlightened society that is not
based on winning and losing, loss and gain.
When we sit down to meditate, we can
connect with something unconditional — a state of mind, a basic environment that
does not grasp or reject anything. Meditation is probably the only activity that
doesn't add anything to the picture. Everything is allowed to come and go
without further embellishment. Meditation is a totally nonviolent,
non-aggressive occupation. Not filling the space, allowing for the possibility
of connecting with unconditional openness — this provides the basis for real
change. You might say this is setting ourselves a task that is almost
impossible. Maybe that is true. But on the other hand, the more we sit with this
impossibility, the more we find it's always possible after all.
When we cling to thoughts and
memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we touch these
phantoms and let them go, we may discover a space, a break in the chatter, a
glimpse of open sky. This is our birthright — the wisdom with which we
were born, the vast unfolding display of primordial richness, primordial
openness, primordial wisdom itself. All that is necessary then is to rest
undistracted in the immediate present, in this very instant in time. And if we
become drawn away by thoughts, by longings, by hopes and fears, again and again
we can return to this present moment. We are here. We are carried off as if by
the wind, and as if by the wind, we are brought back. When one thought has ended
and another has not begun, we can rest in that space. We train in returning to
the unchanging heart of this very moment. All compassion and all inspiration
come from that.
NOSTALGIA FOR OLD
HABITS
Sometimes we feel tremendous longing
for our old habits. When we work with generosity, we see our nostalgia for
wanting to hold on. When we work with discipline, we see our nostalgia for
wanting to zone out and not relate at all. As we work with patience, we discover
our longing to speed. When we practice exertion, we realize our laziness. With
meditation we see our endless discursiveness, our restlessness and our attitude
of "couldn't care less".
So we simply let that nostalgia be and
know that all human beings are going to feel like that. There's a place for
nostalgia, just as there's a place for everything on this path. Year after year,
we just keep taking off our armor and stepping further into
groundlessness.
This is the training of the
bodhisattva, the training of the servants of peace. The world needs people who
are trained like this — bodhisattva politicians, bodhisattva police, bodhisattva
parents, bodhisattva bus drivers, bodhisattvas at the bank and the grocery
store. In all levels of society we are needed. We are needed to transform our
minds and actions for the sake of other people and for the future of the
world.
 This article was
excerpted with permission from the book:
When Things Fall
Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult
Times
by Pema Chödrön.
©. Reprinted by arrangement
with Shambhala Publications, In., Boston.
www.shambhala.com
Info/Order this book
(hardback) or paperback.
About The
Author
Pema Chödrön is an American Buddhist nun and one of
the foremost students of Chögyam Trungpa, the renowned meditation master. She is
the resident teacher at Gampo Abbey, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan
monastery in North America established for Westerners. She is also the author of
"The Wisdom of No Escape" and "Start Where You Are" and numerous
other books.
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