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

Seeds, imprints and predispositions.

We all know how difficult it is to start habits. We would like to work out more, meditate, spend more time with our family or friends, learn to paint.  We want to eat healthier, be more productive, be more generous.

Starting is hard. Continuing is harder.

Even harder is eliminating the imprints of bad habits.

The Buddha taught that we need to purify our karma, afflictive emotions, cognitive obscurations and habitual tendencies if we are to be completely awake.  Karma is our actions, we need to practice virtue and try not to harm others.  Afflictive emotions are things like attachment, aversion, ignorance, jealousy and arrogance. Cognitive obscurations are the way we perceive self and other, our understanding of reality. Habitual tendencies refer to the impressions, seeds, or predispositions of our past thoughts, actions and experience. Habitual tendencies are mostly unconscious. Most people rarely even think about them much less try to change them. 

Think about your perception of food. Why do you perceive some foods as wholesome and good, whereas others you perceive as disgusting? My dog has no problem eating an old hot dog off the street. The concept of 'this might make me sick' is not one that my dog has (or my child!).

Think about your perception of your body. In Nepal it is common to see men holding hands, it is a sign of friendship and affection. In the U.S. people might think you were invading their personal space or question their sexual orientation. One might incorrectly wonder, why are all these monks gay!

Why do you perceive yourself as strong, or weak, beautiful or ugly? Why do you seek out affirmation, or hide in the shadows? What is it that makes you outgoing, or shy?

These are not easy questions to answer, and often there is no answer. But the question is important.

Once you start to ask the question, you can start the hard work of relinquishing your grasping and fixation to concepts about the way things are or should be. Letting go of concepts is how we break free from the tight hold that habitual tendencies have over our minds and hearts. Then, as those seeds ripen, we can recognize them and let them go.

There is a chance that in our experience, we might catch ourselves asking 'why?', or simply notice how strange our reaction is. Recognize it and let it go.

Working with uncertainty.

You will experience uncertainty on the path.  We can turn and hide from it, or learn to carry it into our practice.   

In the beginning, turn it into a question.  Use it as a marker for curiosity.  Try to resolve it.

In the middle, allow it to refine your practice.  Use it to find the edges and break them down.  Allow it to give rise to dissonance and resistance so you know where to focus your attention.   

In the end, no one has walked this path before.  You are forging an new trail, uncertainty lies just around the next bend.  Keep going. 

Grab a shovel.

Answers don't allow us to go deeper.  Questions do.

As we process and contemplate the information available to us (and it's all available to us), we need to learn to ask better questions.

Ask a question.  Find an answer. 

Answers give you a resting point, a place to contemplate and a ground to dig deeper.

Questions are the shovel that opens up space for further exploration.  Don't sit on your laurels, grab a shovel. 

Exploration.

Sit for ten minutes.

What was your experience?
Where did you experience resistance?
How do you handle that resistance?
Can you know your experience without conceptually elaborating it as you experience it?
Is mental chatter necessary to know your experience?
What is mind?
What are its characteristics and qualities?
When your mind is stable and calm, look deeper, what is there?
When your mind is agitated and restless, why?  Why can't you fix that?  And if you can, how?
What is the nature of mind?
Is it permanent or changing?  Does it exist?  How so?

Start sitting regularly.  Start asking questions and looking for answers.  Then ask more questions.  Keep going deeper.

Where is the end?  Where does it stop?  When do you reach the ground?  Are you sure that is it?

Constant wonder.

The answer is not that important to the astronomer.  They have questions, lot of them actually, but the answers to those questions lead to more questions so there is a constant state of wonder.

The answer is not that important to the meditator either.  They also have lots of questions, but the answers to those questions lead to more questions resulting in a constant state of wonder.

Wonder and fascination fuel passion.  Amateurs are passionate.  Passionate amateurs become experts, masters in their trade.

The astronomer starts out by looking up at the clear night sky with amazement and wondering, "What is all of that?"
The meditator starts out by looking inside at a clear mind with amazement and wondering, "What is this?"

Reliance.

The arising of a fruit, such as an apple, depends on many conditions.  If those conditions are not met, no fruit is to be found.

Can the same be said about our practice?

What is the fruit that we are looking for?  What are the conditions necessary to give rise to such a fruit?  If such a fruit depends on conditions, is it lasting?  Will we be satisfied?

These are actually really hard questions to form answers around.  Sit with them and work them over.  Let them work you over.

Then ask yourself, what can I rely on?

The Code.

1. You have the guts.
2. Your going to do the work.
3. Your going to work hard.
4. Your going to make the time.
5. Your self-directed and self-reliant.
6. You ask questions.  Lots of questions.
7. You dig deeper. 
8. You show up.  For yourself and others.
9. You love being generous.
10. You are authentic.

11. And this isn't all about you.