Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [41]
Once, when Allen Ginsberg was in Colorado to do a one-month solitary meditation retreat, he told his lama, Trungpa Rinpoche, that he was going to bring little notepads that he would keep by his meditation cushion so he could write down the beautiful haiku that would flash into his mind after many hours of meditation. The lama said, “Can I see your pads and pens?” When Ginsberg displayed the tools of his literary trade, the lama snatched them away, saying that the reason to go on retreat and meditate is to stop collecting and holding on to all those transient thought bubbles. He exhorted Ginsberg simply to be aware of the ongoing process of transparent awareness itself, rather than getting caught up in collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the mind and continuously rearranging its contents in the display cases of artistic ambition.
Ginsberg loved to tell this story, because he was still—like all of us—so attached to displaying beautiful thought bubbles. The more we meditate, the more good ideas we seem to get, don’t we? We can’t wait to get back home and tell somebody, write about them, paint them, bottle them, and market them. Samsara cologne, nirvana books and tapes, enlightenment records, greeting cards, and calendars. Guru Beer! (Yes, there is such a brand, made in India.)
Nirvana, the end of all our troubles, the extinction of this fire of craving, is just on the other side of each moment of craving, of hanging on. That’s where the great “letting go” comes in and must take place. Then ultimate peace is right there; total fulfillment, wholeness, the end of all craving, luminous and profound; simple not complicated; unfathomable, bottomless, yet inexhaustibly rich. Not like those little thought bubbles we are always trying to collect so that at least we have something to show for ourselves—a whole pile of little thought bubbles on a pad, big deal! Is that all we shall have at the sunset of our lives, a big, frothy pile of foam?
Of course we love poetry, and we love everything that is sparkling, original, and fresh. Still, all that is stale compared to simply experiencing the absolutely startling, poetic freshness of the present moment without having to write down, collect, preserve, or fabricate anything. Then every moment bespeaks truth.
According to the Buddha himself, nirvana is simply the relinquishment of craving, of clinging, of attachment. Yet this is not a small thing. The more our spiritual practice, our meditation, and our daily activity is congruent with desirelessness and nonattachment—the less inflexible, demanding, selfish, and greedy we are—the more nirvana starts to creep in, almost insidiously. Even if nirvana is right here, we are often elsewhere!
Nirvana is always trying to seep through the small chinks in our ego’s armor. You can widen these openings by relinquishing some of the defenses and barricades of your persona, your holding on, your repetitive, addictive, habitual behavior—in short, your psychological conditioning. When we really do “let go” and get used to letting go, that inner conflict, that irritation, that friction heat of dukkha actually does die down, and we can experience more and more of the inner peace that nirvana epitomizes. We become less dependent, less demanding, less complicated, less scattered and alienated, less speedy, needy, and greedy. We become more healed, whole, happy, healthy, and wise. We feel totally renewed.
FACT OF LIFE #4
The Fourth Noble Truth tells us that there is a tried-and-true