Letter to a young practitioner.

Dear friend,

It is a great joy and pleasure to see you so eagerly engage in the practice and the curiosity with which you inquire about the path. I implore you to never temper this curiosity and to always ask questions of your teachers and other Dharma practitioners whom you hold in high regard.

I have little advice to offer save this- search inside yourself. Everyone around you is looking outwards, building up their image and their status. Our culture revolves around gain and loss. Our culture orients us towards what is easy, and it is clear to me that the path ahead of you is difficult, but that is all the more reason for you to travel it. You must learn to set aside everyday concerns and look within. Dig deep into your own thoughts, feelings and perceptions. Yearn to understand the human condition. Everything in you is played out in the world around you. What you struggle with is what we all struggle with.

There is something that burns in you. Something you must know. Something you must resolve and figure out. Use that, don't deny its necessity. Your urgency will carry you far on the path, use it to fuel your study and practice. Don't waste it on meaningless activity or distracted impulses. Accept the fact that you are called to the practice, with all of the responsibility and heaviness that it requires.

If you think that you do not have what you need, that your situation is too rough or that it is not the right time; question yourself, not your life. The practitioner uses all situations as the practice, all obstacles as the path. From where you stand, there is no map. You can only take one step forward and look for guides along the way. The Buddha himself said that all he can do is open the door, you must walk through.

You must know how much your example inspires us. Your effort and dedication will always give your fellow practitioners and teachers much joy. But also know that you will often feel alone on the path. Padampa Sangye told his student Machig Lapdron, that in the deepest and darkest of places you must find the Buddha within. You must follow that example.

There are a few teachings with which you must make your constant companion. When all seems lost and you feel that you are reaching about in the darkness, they will be like beacons of light on the horizon calling you forth. They are the Dharmachakrapravatana on the four noble truths, Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva, and Garab Dorje's Three Words that Strike the Essential Point. Rely on them always and let them inspire you and be a source of rest and abundance. Let these teachings infuse your mind and shape your practice. Learn from them what seems relevant now, but return again and again as they will never stop revealing themselves in your practice. They will naturally give rise to devotion for the lineage and deepen your contemplation.

Be attentive to that which rises up in you. Learn to be comfortable with yourself. Find peace and joy in solitude. When you can sit for hours and not do anything, you have made friends with yourself in a way that few among us can appreciate. The practice never gets easier, you simply learn to be more comfortable with the truth of suffering. As you learn to more fully understand the human condition, you learn to be less reactive and you will find that you don't have to respond to every little impulse. You will learn to rest in openness, to be more receptive and to embrace the vulnerability of what it means to be human. In that space, where we can see clearly without getting caught by the hook of attachment or aversion, reification or denial, there is an opportunity that we will see the truth of cessation and recognize our true nature. Cessation isn't extinction, it isn't a nothingness. What ceases is our false self, our confused notion of who we are. What is revealed is our true nature, what the Buddha called the tathagatagarbha, the buddha heart. This is a legacy available to you, something you have the opportunity to carry forward into your life.

Be patient with yourself. Fight the urge to expect a quick result. The result is the path, and the journey ahead is long. What you want you cannot give birth to now, you must live it. It must live through you. Each experience, each impression gives it shape and form. The practice creates the form of your life. As you sit with the inexpressible, that which is just beyond the reach of your mind, you will give birth to clarity. Recognize the freedom in that arising. Everything is arising. That is the way the practitioner moves through the world.

When you are lost for meaning and purpose, wondering what is the point, know that there is purpose in carrying something. Carry the practice into every nook and cranny of your life. The practice will give your life meaning and from it you will engender a much broader scope of the world and your place in it. Let it inform your intentions, your actions and your livelihood. Carry this as a special gift to yourself, and should you dare, and of course you must, share your time, energy and heart with others.

Faithfully yours, and with much confidence in you as you set out on this journey.

Gregory Scott Patenaude

Dharma practitioners don't just meditate.

The Buddha's teachings get a lot of press about meditation. A lot of people may even equate the Buddha's teachings with meditation. That's what the Buddha did, right?

The Buddha did not just teach about meditation.

Meditation is a critical step in a much larger process of developing insight and wisdom. The development of wisdom evolves through three phases- study, contemplation and meditation.

When we study, we learn key concepts and principles. We are exposed to ideas and use reason and logic to determine their validity.

Contemplation is the process of building connections, coming at the material from different angles and reflecting on our experience of the teachings we have been studying. Contemplation involves deeper aspects of our mind and heart, often within the sphere of contemplation we will experience flashes of insight or meaning that seem to come from outside our own conjecture.

Meditation is the process of moving beyond concepts and into direct experience. We can talk about what chocolate tastes like, we can compare it to other regional varieties, but at some point we need to actually taste the chocolate. Meditation is a direct experience of the teachings.

We gain a certain type of knowledge and wisdom through study. We gain a different type of knowledge and wisdom through contemplation. The wisdom of meditation is the wisdom of direct experience.

The fundamental problem that all dharma practitioners are trying to resolve is the human condition complete with all of its negative and positive aspects. We as humans experience a lot of pain and suffering. Mental illness runs rampant through our communities affecting both young and old. But we also see great examples of virtues like compassion, generosity and wisdom. As dharma practitioners work to solve this problem, they rely on the process of study, contemplation and meditation. Over and over again, they cycle through these processes, continuously trying to resolve the nature of their own human life, and sharing that wisdom with others.

Slowly, and tirelessly they gain wisdom about how to work with suffering and practice virtue.
Slowly, and tirelessly they gain wisdom about how to live with suffering and share virtue.
Slowly, and tirelessly they discover freedom in the midst of suffering and learn how to embody virtue.
Slowly, and tirelessly they learn how to embody virtue and discover freedom in the midst of suffering.

Endless iterations.

You're probably not going to be doing your practice in five years.  Even less likely in ten or twenty years.  It's just not probable.  

Merit is an uncommon trait here in the West.  We don't really refer to each other as having merit or even cultivating merit.  Its not something that we place much value on, day to day.

Merit is something really important when practicing the Buddha's teachings.  Merit refers to the potential of the mind.  It can be thought of as the impetus, the reservoir, the force.  None of those really do it justice though, because really merit refers to the capacity to hold or bear, the capacity to carry, or even continue.

When you think about a person encountering the Dharma, it is highly unlikely that this person will be able to actually meet with the teachings, practice them, carry them through their life and achieve some kind of result or realization.  It is just not very likely.  We have so much of our own baggage, so many problems and worldly concerns.  And that is all within the context of what is going on right now in our lives.

Over the course of our single lifetime we go through countless iterations.  The chance that we will be able to carry your practice through that much variability and resistance is even less likely.  Our modern society and the demands on the individual are constantly changing.  For someone to have encountered the Dharma and put it into practice in their middle ages, then to go through times of struggle, changing professions, seeing loved ones come and go, making friends, losing friends, moving, falling in love, breaking up, falling sick, being healed.   We cycle through endless iterations.

The amount of merit that we need for our practice to endure amidst all of those changing circumstances, well, it is beyond measure.  It is truly amazing that we can encounter practitioners who are able to carry their practice from year to year, generation to generation.  We should rejoice in their dedication, commitment and resilience.   We should also aspire to develop such merit and determination ourselves. 

Those practitioners of virtue are said to have great merit, but if you talk to them they won't talk about their potential, or about how strong of an impetus they feel to practice.  They won't refer to themselves as being special at all.  Instead, you will see that their minds are like a vast ocean, able to accommodate and accept whatever is placed in their path.  They go through endless iterations just like us, but for them, they are just like waves or boats that come and go.  The iterations they go through in their life don't confine their practice, but rather the 'stuff' that makes their practice continue to be possible. 

Practitioners lacking merit feel trapped by circumstances,
those rich in merit take it as fuel on the path. 

Three Hats.

1. Debater.
The debater uses reason and logic to examine a claim.  People can say whatever they want, but the debater asks, Why?  Why is what your saying actually the case?

2. Scientist.
The scientist wants evidence and supporting facts for your claim.  They want to see a real life example, some data that actually support your claim.  You can be skilled at reason and logic, but if reality doesn't match up with your claims, the scientist rejects it as false.

3. Yogin.
The yogin is a practitioner.  It is a lived experience.  They have first-hand experience, a testimony to share and a legacy to pass on.   

You need to wear all three hats.

If you only wear the yogins hat, you may have profound life experiences and a great deal of certainty, but doubt can easily creep in when people question your experience.  They can expose potential flaws or different views which may create uncertainty and doubt in your own experience.  When you doubt your own experience, you essentially have nothing, so the yogin needs the debater and scientist hats to eliminate and manage doubt and also to analyze the validity of their experience. 

If you only wear the scientist hat your understanding is limited to an objective frame of reference.  The scientist by necessity really needs to also wear the debater hat, but without the yogin's hat they are always somewhat removed or distant from their subject matter.  They don't allow their subject matter to change them, it remains an object of knowledge and a concept.

The debater may also wear the yogin's hat, but without the scientist's hat they risk falling to the extreme of a televangelist.  The debater can formulate concrete proofs and use a wide range of logical reasoning to support their position and indeed a deep heartfelt experience, but if they are not open to the scientist's view they may be fighting for the side of ignorance.  When reality and the facts don't match up to your view, sometimes it is your view that needs changing not the tone of your voice.

When you wear all three hats you have a complete practice.  You really have something worth sharing.  You not only know the practice, you know why the practice is important and what effect it has.  You know where the potential sources of error and problems lie, you know how to approach failure and mistakes.  You know what is authentic, and what is not.

With all three hats, you develop certainty and confidence.  With certainty and confidence, you fulfill your own aims and you can truly act for the aims of others.