Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [129]
Dzogchen practitioners come to recognize that it is not enough to just meditate a little each day; they learn to integrate meditation with every moment of every day. Infusing whatever we do and all our relationships with a sense of meaning and sacredness is the goal—it is also the practice. Applying our view into action every minute is our meditation practice, which reaches far beyond the confines of the meditation seat or the explicitly religious setting.
One of my favorite American Buddhist teaching tales about the value of regular daily practice concerns the peerless basketball great, Michael Jordan. Air Jordan was not born a protégé, like Mozart. In fact, while growing up Jordan was cut from his junior high school team; he was just not good enough. It was only through practicing basketball every morning before school with the kind coach who had cut him from the squad that he became good enough to play high school ball. The rest is history. This is a wonderful example of mastery through perseverance and practice. This is why yogis and meditators practice their disciplines every day, just like athletes and musicians.
The pianist expends hours of effort memorizing a difficult sonata, and only then plays it effortlessly. The potter learns to center the wet clay perfectly on the wheel so that it’s stable and can hold its place by itself. The same is true with meditation: First one gets the mind unified through quiet and calm practice; then it’s free, stable, and unbound yet centered at any speed, maintaining itself effortlessly.
Working out the contradiction between effort and effortlessness—hard work and simple surrender—helps us become more energetic, steadfast, patient, and persevering; it also helps us soften up through the graceful complementary virtues of yielding acceptance and heartfelt gratitude for whatever comes our way. In short, because Right Effort is spiritual effort, it implies being able to just let go, at the right time and in the right way, and simply do what must be done.
RENUNCIATION:
GIVING THINGS UP AND AWAY
Leaving one’s homeland is accomplishing half the Dharma.
—MILAREPA
Renunciation is a time-honored way of working on oneself. The Buddha himself is probably the best-known example of renunciation. The Buddha, like other seekers of his time, left his homeland in order to meditate in dense jungles and blazing deserts. But what does the word renunciation realistically mean today in the modern context of Buddhism? We today are far more socially mobile. Phones, faxes, beepers, and the Internet have made almost everyone reachable, no matter where we are. How can we leave our homeland, now that our homeland has become the planet itself? Do we really have to turn our backs on family, friends, and work in order to practice Dharma? I don’t think so. Renunciation doesn’t mean walking away from our responsibilities and loved ones; it does mean abandoning our intense emotional attachments and compulsive preoccupations.
Trungpa Rinpoche said, “Usually we think of renunciation as celibacy, poverty, obedience, shaving your head, going off somewhere and leaving everything behind.” He then gave a wider tantric interpretation of renunciation: “Renunciation means to let go of holding back.”
In Tibet, the term renunciation did not imply a sacrifice, or any notion of penance. Instead it meant the relief of finally dropping and getting rid of excess baggage through an arising of inner certainty about the illusory nature of created things. If we get even the smallest glimpse of liberation and what it means to experience freedom from want, we see where our happiness truly lies. This is the arising of inner certainty. When that occurs we begin to renounce and give up the unfulfilling thoughts and behaviors that create negative karma.
Renunciation refers