Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [54]
The fear of death and infernal rebirths due to my evil actions has led me to practice in solitude in the snowcapped mountains.
On the uncertainty of life’s duration and the moment of death I have deeply meditated.
Thus I have reached the deathless, unshakable citadel of realization of the absolute essence.
My fear and doubts have vanished like mist into the distance, never to disturb me again.
I will die content and free from regrets.
This is the fruit of Dharma practice.
Milarepa was spiritually reborn on those Himalayan peaks, and in so doing he changed his karma. He changed so much that he reached perfect enlightenment—in a single lifetime.
Each of us can do the same thing. The wilderness of Tibet is no more or less desolate than the wilderness of corporate America with its materialistic, consumer culture. Who doesn’t sometimes feel alienated and lost in the jungle of doubt, meaninglessness, and despair as life goes by, seemingly slipping through our fingers?
THE DHARMA’S VIEW OF SELF
Having a wonderful time; wish I was here.
The earth is not the center of the universe! Grasping the truth of that statement was an amazing achievement for mankind. When Copernicus first presented his revolutionary theory that the earth revolved around the sun rather than vice versa, people thought he was mad. In fact, when Galileo used a telescope to prove Copernican heliocentric theory, he was considered a heretic for challenging the prevalent religious beliefs with his scientific views; Galileo was tried and ordered to recant his views. Faced with torture, he recanted and was placed under house arrest, where he remained for the last eight years of his life. On Galileo’s deathbed, his last words reportedly were, “No matter what they say, the earth revolves around the sun.”
People simply couldn’t accept a scientific truth. The earth not the center? How could that be? How could our planet on which we walk not be the place of primary importance? We accept Copernicus’ truth, but even now, it’s difficult to fathom its full significance. Let’s be honest here: For most of us, it’s also sometimes difficult to accept any view of the universe in which each of us, as individuals, are not the centers of our own universe. Some solipsism lives in each of us, doesn’t it?
It’s very seductive to believe, “I am the center of all I see.” After all, that’s how we start out as infants: seeing ourselves as the center around which everything revolves. Some of us may have had childhoods in which almost nobody ever seriously challenged that point of view. Small wonder that it’s so difficult for Westerners to grasp the Buddhist concept of non-self, egolessness, or anatta. At first glance it seems so foreign, so different, and so confusing, but much of the difficulty rests in how to accurately translate Sanskrit and Pali words and phrases.
The Dharma’s view of the self is as evolved and radical as Copernicus’ view of the universe: The self, as we know it, doesn’t really exist. The key phrase is “as we know it.” The self is simply not what we think it is. Once someone asked me what I had learned in all my years of Buddhist practice, and I spontaneously answered, “I’m not who I think I am.” We are often so identified with who we think we are that it not only determines how we live, but it limits how we can be. Our thoughts and concepts obscure reality, circumscribing us and our world.
If you had to quickly answer the question, “Who are you? What are you?” what would you answer? Do you, for example, identify with your body? Would you answer, “I’m young, old, middle-aged?” Are you identified with your sex? Would you answer, “I’m a man or a woman?” Would you say your nationality, your species, your religious affiliation? Are you identified with your physical characteristics? Tall, short, brunet, dark-skinned, light-skinned? Do you identify with physical