Seven Points of Mind Training

Point 3 : Transformation of Bad Circumstances

16: Whatever you meet unexpectedly join with meditation.

Point Three : Whatever you meet unexpectedly join with meditation.

Commentary :

There are three sets of slogans connected with how to carry every day occurrences into your practice on the path. The first set is connected with relative bodhichitta and includes the slogans "Drive all blames into one" and "Be grateful to everyone." The second set is connected with absolute bodhichitta and comprises the slogan "Seeing confusion as the four kayas / Is unsurpassable shunyata protection." The third set is the special activities connected with following the path. The headline slogan for that is "Four practices are the best of methods." And having discussed those three categories, there is a tail end, which is this slogan "Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation." It is not necessarily the least, but it is the last. It is the last slogan of the third point of mind training, which is concerned with bringing your experience onto the path properly, and it is actually a very interesting one.

In this slogan, the word join has the feeling of putting together butter and bread. You put together or join situations with meditation, or with shamatha-vipashyana. The idea is that whatever comes up is not a sudden threat or an encouragement or any of that bullshit. Instead it simply goes along with one's discipline, one's awareness of compassion. If somebody hits you in the face, that's fine. Or if somebody decides to steal your bottle of Coke, that's fine too. This is somewhat naive, in a way, but at the same time it is very powerful.

Generally speaking, Western audiences have a problem with this kind of thing. It sounds love-and-lighty, like the hippie ethic in which "Everything is going to be okay. Everybody is everybody's property, everything is everybody's property. You can share anything with anybody. Don't lay ego trips on things." But this is something more than that. It is not love-and-light. It is simply to be open and precise, and to know your territory at the same time. You are going to relate with your own neurosis rather than expanding that neurosis to others.

"Whatever you meet" could be either a pleasurable or painful situation - but it always comes in the form of a surprise. You think that you have settled your affairs properly: you have your little apartment and you are settled in New York City; your friends come around, and everything is okay; business is fine. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you realize that you have run out of money! Or, for that matter, your boyfriend or your girlfriend is giving you up. Or the floor of your apartment is falling down. Even simple situations could come as quite a surprise: you are in the middle of peaceful, calm sitting practice, everything is fine - and then somebody says, "Fuck you!" An insult out of nowhere. On the other hand, maybe somebody says, "I think you're a fantastic person," or you suddenly inherit a million dollars just as you are fixing up your apartment which is falling apart. The surprise could go both ways.

"Whatever you meet" refers to any sudden occurrence like that. That is why the slogan says that whatever you meet, any situation you come across, should be joined immediately with meditation. Whatever shakes you should without delay, right away, be incorporated into the path. By the practice of shamatha-vipashyana, seeming obstacles can be accommodated on the spot through the sudden spark of awareness. The idea is not to react right away to either painful or pleasurable situations. Instead, once more, you should reflect on the exchange of sending and taking, or tonglen discipline. If you inherit a million dollars, you give it away, saying, "This is not for me. It belongs to all sentient beings." If you are being sued for a million dollars, you say, "I will take the blame, and whatever positive comes out of this belongs to all sentient beings."

Obviously, there might be a problem when you first hear the good news or the bad news. At that point you go, "Aaah!" (Vidyadhara gasps.) That aaah! is some sort of ultimate bodhichitta. But after that, you need to cultivate relative bodhichitta, in order to make the whole thing pragmatic. Therefore, you practice the sending and taking of whatever is necessary. The important point is that when you take, you take the worst; and when you give, you give the best. So don't take any credit - unless you have been blamed. "I have been blamed for stealing all the shoes, and I take the credit!"

In some sense, when you begin to settle down to that kind of practice, to that level of being decent and good, you begin to feel very comfortable and relaxed in your world. It actually takes away your anxiety altogether, because you don't have to pretend at all. You have a general sense that you don't have to be defensive and you don't have to powerfully attack others anymore. There is so much accommodation taking place in you. And out of that comes a kind of power: what you say begins to make sense to others. The whole thing works so wonderfully. It does not have to become martyrdom. It works very beautifully.

That is the end of our discussion of the discipline of carrying whatever occurs in our life onto the path, which is connected with patience and nonaggression.