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How the Ego-Mind Tries to Destroy Faith

3/30/2019

One of the most important steps in ending our suffering is to reconnect with the faith and trust that is in our heart, our true Buddha self. This is not faith and trust in others, or in the world at large. It is faith and trust in ourselves.

Whether it’s faith that we will be ok, safe, regardless what life throws our way because we have returned home to out true Buddha nature and are at peace and happy. Whether it’s faith that we are a good person. Or weather it’s faith that our efforts will bear fruit. Having faith is important to not succumbing to the endless sniping, the doubts, emotions, confusion, and negativity, of the ego-mind.

When I think of the importance of faith, I’m reminded of the title of the Bach cantata, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Indeed, if you have faith, and it comes from deep in your heart, it is a mighty fortress. The other aspect of our fortress is taking refuge in the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha, because it is only through the support of their wisdom that we learn to find our true selves, our Buddha nature, and free ourselves from the control of our ego-mind.

Regarding faith that our efforts will bear fruit, perhaps in the way we envision, perhaps in some other way, it is important to note that this is free of attachment. We approach our efforts with the attitude that if it happens as we envision, great; if it doesn’t, that’s ok too. But we still have faith in our efforts. The two attitudes are not inconsistent.

Nor is there anything un-Buddhist about thinking about the future. It is impossible to go through life without planning for the future. As I’ve frequently written, being present does not mean not planning for the future. It does, however, impact how we plan for or think about the future. (See my posts, “As a Buddhist, How Do You Think About the Future,” and “As a Buddhist - Revisited.”)

But faith to the ego-mind is similar to what light is to a vampire. Because faith can deal a mortal blow to the ego-mind by denying it access to you; by creating a forcefield around you that repels any negative energy. The ego-mind therefore seeks to destroy your faith either by belittling it, perverting the concept of faith, or rolling over it by sheer force of power.

One way it destroys is by saying that faith is “just words.” If you’re miserable now, if your lacking what you want … that is what’s real. Faith in the future is just words. And that sentence can have a devastating impact on faith if the faith does not run deep.

A related way is using the Buddhist emphasis on being present to destroy faith. The ego-mind will remind you that you have to live in the present, everything else is thought. So forget about faith. But this is a perversion of the concept of faith; it is not thought, it is not a function of the mind, it comes from the heart. So even if one is present, one can have faith.

If all else fails, the ego-mind will try to overwhelm you with the power of emotions and roll over your faith like a steamroller. The power of the ego-mind and its willingness to use that power regardless of its impact on your wellbeing is not to be underestimated.

As with all challenges in walking the path, one must be ever vigilant of the darkness and negativity of the ego-mind. It is not your companion in your search to end suffering; it is your adversary. Have compassion for it, but know that it is your adversary.

You may well ask the eternal question, why does the ego-mind do this to us? The ego-mind has been formed by our life-experiences and what it sees as the way to protect us from these experiences in the future. It does not want to hurt us, but if we are destroyed in the process of trying to protect us, that doesn’t seem to impact the ego-mind.

Also, remember that your wounded inner child is the avatar of your ego-mind. He is very much alive in you right now. Your wounded inner child sees the world as a menacing, hostile, place. Until your wounded inner child is healed, he will continue to scream and yell, throw temper tantrums, when he is confronted by what he sees as the hostile world. He takes everything very personally. His trauma is so deep that it distorts everything.

Knowing this, being aware, is of critical importance as you try to move from a past controlled by your ego-mind to a future in which you put your will and your life in the care of your true Buddha nature.

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How to Offer Others Joy

3/23/2019

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It is a central teaching of Buddhism that an important part of our experiencing joy is offering joy to others. For example, part of the grace that was said before our meals at a temple I used to attend was, "With the first taste, I promise to offer joy. With the second taste, I promise to help relieve the suffering of others. With the third taste, I promise to see others' joy a my own." It is part of the tradition of selflessness.

In my view, offering others joy is of even deeper importance. As I've written, our only purpose in life is to offer ourselves and others joy. This is the essence of being human, of humanity. (See my posts, “What is Your Task in Life?” and “Offering Myself Joy!” And for the one exception, see my post “Evil - How Should a Buddhist Respond?”)

Before going any further, it would be good to remind the reader what the definition of joy is in the Buddhist context. It is not fun; it is not laughter; it is not excitement. Joy is a spiritual feeling that resides in the heart. It is a feeling of purity and goodness. It is a feeling of lightness. It is a feeling that can only be experienced free of the influence of the ego-mind. (See my post, “Joy - At Last Real Understanding.”)

You offer yourself joy by taking pleasure in each passing moment, being free of any desire for the present moment to be different in any way from what it is right now; being in touch with the positive energy, the joy, in your heart at all times; and having unconditional compassion for yourself.

But how does one offer others joy? Most people would say that you do this by doing good things for people, by giving them things that they want. This may indeed make someone happy, but it does not offer them joy. Remember, joy is a spiritual feeling about oneself and one's relationship with the world around you.

To understand the answer to this question, we first need to remind ourselves why most people, including ourselves, suffer. People suffer because they were raised ... whether by their family, their social circle, or the prevailing culture ... in a manner that created deep feelings of insecurity which led to feelings of fear and anxiety, among others. We feel we are not listened to, we are not respected. We are thus consumed by our feelings of insecurity and the related emotions of anxiety, fear, anger, resentment. The list goes on and on.

If we want to offer others joy, then at a minimum we should not add to their suffering and hopefully help them feel good about themselves. One way of doing both is by showing others that you have faith in them doing whatever it is they set out to do. By always being a positive support next to them. By honoring them. And by seeing them as yourself.

How does this translate into real life actions? How do we implement this? Most people do not have a lot of faith in themselves. Even if they are full of bravado, deep down they do not have faith in themselves; their bravado is a facade. So the first step in offering joy is to show them you have faith in them by not interjecting yourself into their process. Because when you do that, the impact is that they feel you don't trust their ability to sort things out themselves; if necessary to learn from their own mistakes. And that undermines their own self-confidence.

There are several ways of implementing this intent. This first is to not challenge or question them. The second is to not finish their thoughts or restate their thoughts. The third is to not interrupt them, correct them, or think for them. Fourth, do not doing anything for them unless asked. Finally, do not put in your two cents unless asked directly.

This is very, and I mean very, hard for most of us to do. Why? Because we are subject to our own egos. We think that we have the answers or at a minimum that we can help the process the other person is going through. It can be something as simple as how to drive from point A to point B, or something very complex.

If you think about it, you will find that in your interactions with others, you regularly do all the things that I just listed one shouldn't do if you want to show someone you have faith in them doing what they set out to do. If you intend to offer them joy. You may think this all sounds silly; that people need to grow up, that's life. But think about how you feel when someone does these things to you.

This does not mean that you can never have input, make a suggestion to someone. But the timing of your comment and how it is made is of critical importance. Basically, you never interject in the middle of the process, while it is happening. You wait for a quiet time, like at dinner, when you can bring something up, comment, and what you say has a chance of being received with equanimity.

The next step is being a positive support for people. We do this by always being in touch with the positive energy in our heart and the neutrality of our senses, free of the intervention of our ego-mind. Then we are free of worries and concerns; then we are full of faith in the other person. And so when we speak, we will always do so in a way which offers positive support.

The next way to make people feel good about themselves is to honor them. This means paying attention, listening, to what the other person is saying. Stopping whatever you're doing when he or she speaks and turn your body towards him. Every person deserves your undivided attention when they speak. Again, if the other person feels that you are not paying attention to them, then that activates feelings of lack of respect from their learned experience.

Finally, you help insure that you perform the steps mentioned by seeing the other person as yourself. By seeing their needs and your needs. Their need, for example, for boundaries as your need for boundaries. Their need for respect as your need for respect. Their need for self-confidence as your need for self-confidence. And by seeing things through their eyes, their perceptions. If you step into someone's shoes and understand where they are coming from, then you are more likely to be on guard for things you would otherwise automatically do that could harm the other person. And stop yourself from doing them.

This will also make you a better listener, because if you're thinking about your reactions while someone is speaking, you really can't hear what they're saying. The time for your perceptions is later.

Again, this is all a real challenge for most of us. It means adopting a very different perspective in our relations with others, whether it's our loved ones, colleagues, or strangers. But if you truly want to experience joy, if you want to connect with your heart, your true Buddha self; if you want to offer others joy rather than just stroke your ego-mind … then your intent should be to implement these steps.

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The Three Stages of Embrace

3/18/2019

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In talking to several people about the process of the heart’s embrace (see my post of that title), I found that the idea of embracing very negative, hurtful, experiences or what their inner child and therefore they had become because of those experiences was not something they were open to. Indeed they were resentful of the experiences and hated what they had become.

This is precisely why, as taught by many including Pema Chodron, they need to embrace these experiences and aspects of their being in order to end their suffering. But the word “embrace” is something that the ego-mind rebels against. And although these were all people deeply on the spiritual path, they could not get past the fury of their ego-mind.

As I sat with this quandary, I realized that as with acceptance and forgiveness/compassion, embracing deep trauma has to be approached in stages. (See my posts, “The Stages of Acceptance,” and “The Stages of Forgiveness/Compassion.”)

The first stage is understanding how these experiences or these aspects of being came to be. The experience that caused the trauma was itself the expression of suffering. As a monk once told me, if anyone does something that pushes your buttons or harms you, that action was a direct result of their suffering. It is how they were programmed to act in response to their suffering. No one voluntarily does something hurtful.

This is true even if someone is truly evil, the devil incarnate. And while I would not treat such a one (they are no longer human, so I don’t use the word “person”) with loving kindness, I do have compassion for them. (See my post, “Evil - How Should a Buddhist Respond?”)

The trauma itself was caused by the fragility of the ego-mind. The feeling of insecurity that we all acquire very early in our childhood. (See my post, “Insecurity - Nurture not Nature.”)

The point is that both the experience itself and the resulting trauma came about not through some freely willed action, but rather through an automatic response based on the conditioning that we and the other had received. No one was at fault in the deepest sense of the word; responsible yes, but not guilty. Guilt presumes a choice.

Understanding this leads to the second stage which is compassion, both for the person who caused the traumatic experience and for ourselves for reacting to it in a way that was traumatic. In a way which we often characterize as weak. This too has its stages (see my post noted above). We are not by nurture (we are by nature, but not nurture) compassionate. And so we must first have the intent to be compassionate based on the spiritual teachings we have received. Then we must actually open up are hearts to being compassionate. Just do it.

Once we have achieved compassion, the door is then open for the heart’s embrace. Remembering that embrace does not mean putting a positive value judgment on it, that it wasn’t bad or hurtful. Embrace is just saying it was the way it was, owning it as part of your life, and being aware of its having a positive impact in so far as making you the person you are today, seeking peace and happiness on the path.

Once you do fully embrace your experience and being, you will find that all internal and external struggle will cease to be because nothing offends anymore. And when nothing offends, you stop fighting against it, which paradoxically only gave it more power. You will be at peace.

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Insecurity - Nurture Not Nature

3/15/2019

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We are all born with the Buddha nature inside us. The unborn child is thus at peace, feels safe and secure (barring negative in-the-womb experiences). But that peace is taken away from us almost from the moment of our birth and by most of the life experiences we’ve had since.

Birth, being thrust out of the womb, has to be a scary experience. When an animal is born, it is typically licked all over by the mother and is always next to the mother’s warmth until weaned. But when a baby is born, it is slapped on the behind, washed by a stranger, rolled up in a blanket and given to its mother to be held and fed before being put in a basinet by itself. Not a nurturing environment.

When a child is born, he has four basic needs: food, freedom from pain, warmth/nurturing, and physical security. These are the four irreducible needs of all human beings. (See my book, The Self in No Self.) In particular, a baby’s need for nurturing, for unconditional love, is almost without limit. So from the moment of its birth, a baby finds that its needs are not met, and the first seeds of insecurity are sown.

This pattern continues during the child’s formative first years. It’s not that parents don’t love their new child and shower it with attention; it’s that the needs of the baby and toddler go beyond what most parents are able to give. Whether it’s how they were raised, the demands of work or home, or having their own problems to deal with … it’s just the way it is. And so the child’s insecurity takes root.

As an example, there’s the question of whether and how long to let a baby cry before the parent picks up the child. From a parent’s perspective, a crying child is frequently inconvenient, and so the baby cries for some period of time. Then there’s the French perspective reported several years ago in The New Yorker that it will actually help the baby to let it cry for five minutes before picking it up. But an infant’s cry is instinctive, not reasoned, and must be responded to promptly to provide the nurturing the child needs.

This may seem very minor, but such repeated experiences create a reservoir of feeling unheard, unloved. There are few things more important to the healthy development of a child’s psyche than feeling loved unconditionally. How a baby is responded to impacts that. By the way, unconditional love does not mean that a parent can’t criticize a child, but the context within which that happens and how it is delivered does matter. (See my book, Raising a Happy Child.)

As the baby becomes a young child, proceeds through adolescence, and attains adulthood, the seeds of insecurity planted at birth and during his formative years grow to become a huge tumor inside each of us. Why?

The tumor grows because it’s fed by much of what we experience in life … at home, in school, at work, and in the media. We don’t feel respected or loved. We are either told or learn that we are clearly lacking in some way. Negative labels are applied to us … bad, stupid, ugly, fat. If we want to be loved or admired, we learn that we must change something in ourselves or acquire something. Or if we are praised, we nevertheless understand how easy it is to fall from grace and so are fearful. In fact, those who become famous or successful, although they are often thought of as having huge egos and are imperious, typically have even greater insecurities than the average person because their success is a coping mechanism and they have more to lose.

Because this insecurity runs so deep and is so threatening to us, our mind … what I refer to as the ego-mind … develops a host of strategies early on to “protect” us. If it feels we have been treated badly by others, for example, it will throw up a wall of anger or disdain which gives us a feeling of self-righteousness that obscures the hurt. If it feels we need to do more to achieve success or happiness, it creates cravings and attachments that drive us to get what we need at all costs.

But these strategies do not in fact protect us; instead, they cause us suffering. Yet we take comfort in these familiar emotions/desires because we believe they do protect us or provide us with a path to achieving happiness.

And so every person, each and every one of us, ends up a prisoner of their ego-mind … of the feelings and perceptions, emotions, judgments, cravings, and attachments that are the mind’s reaction to our life experiences. Our every action and thought is controlled by our feelings and perceptions. The habit-energy is ingrained.

Insecurity thus seen is nurture, not nature. We were not born insecure, but we were raised that way. Thankfully, though, our true Buddha nature remains inside us, buried but in tact. The path provides us the way to reconnect with our true Buddha nature, to free ourselves from this insecurity and the emotions and perceptions that flow from it, and thus find the peace and happiness that is our birthright.

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Thought Objects

3/8/2019

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There’s a line in one of my favorite spiritual poems that goes “When the mind rest undisturbed, nothing in the world offends, and when no thing offends, all obstructions cease to be, thought objects disappear.”

I have always found the phrase “thought objects disappear” to be odd. I know it does not mean that the objects disappear. But I didn’t know what to make of it.

In a truly “duh!” moment in my meditation recently, when I recited those words, I realized that what the phrase means is that when one is in that state one does not apply thought to objects. They just are. You simply observe them. You experience them directly free of the intervention of your ego-mind.

You would have thought I would have picked up on that a long time ago, but I didn’t. Such are the vagaries of the mind.

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The Fourfold Path to Freedom

3/2/2019

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When the Buddha set turning the wheel of the dharma, he taught the Four Noble Truths regarding suffering, the cause of it, and the ending of it. As we all know, the ending of it is a real challenge, often seemingly impossible.

When I lived in Michigan and went to a rural Vietnamese Zen temple for 10 years, I received very powerful teaching from the monks there. They hammered home constantly the cause of suffering and ultimately what was necessary to relieve ourselves of that suffering … surrendering our ego to our true Buddha nature. When I wrote The Self in No Self and Scratching the Itch: Getting to the Root of Our Suffering, I related their teaching distilled into what I called the Fourfold Path to Freedom,.

The third Noble Truth related by the Buddha is realizing that by giving up our cravings, being free of them, we can end our suffering. And the fourth is the path that leads to the cessation of our cravings … the Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of Right View, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Diligence, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

Many teachers operationalize this teaching by talking about mindfully ceasing to do the things that cause us suffering and doing positive things that bring us happiness. That’s fine as far as it goes but the process is too circumscribed.

The catch with the Eightfold Path is that in order to practice it one must first be free of ego … the ultimate cause of all our suffering. One cannot practice Right View or Right anything if ones ego, ones learned experience, is an active force in ones mind, because the ego will intervene by generating thoughts/obstructions which commandeer our mind and obscure our true Buddha nature, from which flows the various Right activities.

That said, I do not mean that following the Noble Eightfold Path is dependent on successfully freeing oneself from all intervention of your ego-mind. Rather as one slowly increases the moments of your life which are free of the intervention of your ego-mind, you will become more and more able to make progress on that path.

The Buddha said at one point, “To be rid of the conceit ‘I am’ – That is the greatest happiness of all.” Because only then is one truly free. But how to free ourselves from our ego?

Many Buddhist teachers do not address this matter directly. Those that face the power of our ego head on, such as Sogyal Rinpoche, teach that as our discriminating awareness strengthens through meditation, we begin to distinguish clearly between the guidance of our true Buddha nature and our ego. Eventually, the destructiveness of our ego will be clear and that will release us. Similarly, Krishnamurti calls for a “revolution of the psyche” and posits that understanding our conditioning/ego immediately without thought allows us to be free of that conditioning.

Yet many have reached such realization and still remain bound by their egos; it is that powerful and deeply-rooted. Recognizing the difficulty and the centrality of this action to leading a Right life and ending our suffering, the teaching that I received from two Vietnamese Zen monks, Ven. Huyen Te and Ven. Thai Tue, focused on a more defined path to free ourselves from our ego. I have called this the Fourfold Path to Freedom.

Somehow I have not related the Fourfold Path to Freedom in a post, just in my books. Realizing this recently, I am now filling this gap. This teaching had a huge influence on my practice and so I want to share it with you.

Understanding that all things are impermanent and
changeable.
Understanding that all our perceptions have no inherent nature, they are just a product of our mind, and that they are the direct cause of our suffering.
Practicing the Six Paramitas.
Surrendering our ego to our true Buddha nature,
turning our will and our lives over to the care of
our true Buddha nature.

For 20 years since receiving that teaching, I worked to discern through my practice how to not just have the intent but to truly surrender my ego to my true Buddha nature, or as I rather put it, turn my will and my life over to the care of my true Buddha nature. The monk said once, speaking to the sangha, that we had come far but that we were still standing on the precipice because we had not surrendered our ego to our true Buddha nature. He told us that the choice was ours. Not so simple! That challenge and struggle is the core of all my posts and the books I have written.

The Fourfold Path mentions the Six Paramitas. To help get us to the point where we are able to surrender our ego, it is helpful to gradually free ourselves from our ego-centric mentality and behavior. One way we do that is by developing compassion for ourselves and others. The Five Precepts are an essential place to start. But to deepen our practice, it is very helpful to practice the Six Paramitas.

The Six Paramitas are … generosity, virtuous conduct, understanding, enthusiastic effort and diligence, meditation/concentration, and wisdom. (See Chapter 5 in my book, Scratching the Itch: Getting to the Root of our Suffering.) To practice these teachings is to water the seeds of our true Buddha nature. As we develop these qualities, bring them to the surface of our consciousness, we decrease our suffering and increase our awareness, freedom from our ego, and happiness.

If we can be free of the conceit of the ego, then we will be free of our cravings and reach nirvana. This challenging process is described in great detail in my new book, How to Find Inner Peace. But again, remember that all things on the path are incremental. Walking the path is not about achieving perfection. It is the intent which is essential. Better to be free of the control of your ego 60% of the time than not at all, because the 60% will bring you peace and joy.

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