Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [4]
Here, among a community of seekers living on Kopan Hill, my questions and search for purpose no longer seemed strange, weird, or out of place. Suddenly I discovered that it wasn’t just me who wanted to find a deeper sense of meaning. My questions were the universal questions asked by generations of seekers—scientists seeking truth, mystics looking for a direct experience of the divine, the pious seeking God. Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, Christian, Muslim—it didn’t matter—there was a whole world and an entire lineage of seekers, of whom I was a part. I belonged.
At Kopan I discovered that a trail through the spiritual universe had already been blazed. I learned that there was already a map, explicit directions, and guideposts, and there were ways to measure progress. As I began to learn about the compassionate wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism, I saw that others had been to the mountaintop and they were able to help us get there too. Here, I no longer felt alienated or separate. There was a sense of kinship. I was on the way home.
ADDRESSING THE BIG QUESTIONS
“How,” Lama Yeshe asked, “can you help others if you cannot help yourself? Liberate yourself, and you liberate the world.” Lama Yeshe told us there was nothing that he had and knew that we could not have and know. He said, “Open your heart and awaken your mind, and you’ll be there.”
Almost thirty years ago in Nepal, Lama Yeshe addressed my big questions—questions about life, death, self, illusion, reality, love, and transformation. Now I find myself addressing the same issues and hearing the same questions almost daily from a new generation of seekers and in many forms. The questions come in private meetings as well as large workshops, by letters, phone calls, and now by e-mail, through my “Ask the Lama” column on my home page on the World Wide Web. It’s old wine in new recyclable bottles, the same circus with different performers, an ancient tradition with extraordinarily relevant modern applications.
The spiritual life has always been a search for meaning and a search for answers to the two existential questions: “Who am I?” and “Why am I?” A search for truth, personal authenticity and reality, a search for “what is,” a search for purpose; these are the foundations of the spiritual way. Men and women who are ready to deepen or formally embark on a spiritual journey are typically standing at some kind of an emotional crossroads. Often they are grieving over some loss or disappointment—separation from or death of a loved one, a personal crisis, health problems, or an overriding sense that something is wrong or missing. Sometimes they are simply looking for a way to better love the world.
In a very real sense all of our day-to-day problems can be linked to spiritual issues and understanding. For example, I frequently speak to men and women who complain that even though they have painstakingly followed Life’s Little Operating Manual, they feel as though they are coming up empty-handed. Superficially, it may seem as though they are having work problems or relationship problems or health problems, but scratch the surface and there are deeper unresolved questions. Some of these people seem to have so much—family, career, education. Everything seems to be going their way, yet they are often dissatisfied.
At the beginning of The Divine Comedy, Dante, who was just turning thirty-five, wrote, “Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood where the right way was lost. Ah! How hard a thing it is to tell what this wild and rough and difficult wood was….” It was the year 1300 when Dante acknowledged being confused and lost in a dark wood. Yet here on the cusp of the twenty-first century, I can easily relate to these feelings, and in all probability you can too.
Too often life’s paths seem paradoxical and confusing. Even in the brightest daylight, the atmosphere is