There are no problems to be solved. There is only the mind to be trained.

Stupid People

Definition of a stupid person: one with a sincere and heartfelt lack of curiosity about the world around them, rooted in the profound self-centeredness of only being interested in one's own personal and immediate pleasure. Example: a teenage boy.

The Mother-In-Law Chronicles

Here's some irony. I'm more agitated now during my few hours of "respite" from caring for my mother in law with dimentia because my thoughts and emotions are now allowed to go unchecked. While I'm with her, I must constantly practice lojong: give all profit and gain to others, take all loss and defeat upon yourself ("Oh, I'm so sorry I broke that (thing that was broken before I got here)), and completely obliterate my ego. Interestingly, there's a profound peace and serenity in doing that. Now that I'm not practicing lojong, I must go and do my sitting practice in order to maintain my sanity!

Confessions of a Buddhist Slacker: House Painting

I’m sitting on my cushion, looking out the sliding glass doors at the valley below. The trees are bare. The land is sighing peacefully, catching its breath before winter. I fervently resolve to meditate on equanimity so that, for the sake of others, I may attain complete enlightenment.

Patrick Gaffney’s voice, velvet, soothing, guides me from my iPod.

I picture Rinpoche above me, golden and glowing, infusing me with his equanimity and his universal love.

I picture my mother-in-law on my right-hand side in her most annoying glory. She’s telling me, for the 600th time, how some “jackass” insulted her in 1946 and she’s holding her autographed picture of George and Barbara Bush.

I picture my friend on my left. She’s spending her entire day off with me, coaching me and my horse at a horse show. We win second place!

Through my iPod, Patrick continues, “The label ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’ is just based on how the person affects my well-being. But is others’ well-being only significant inasmuch as it supports our happiness?”

Out loud, “Hell yes!”

Oops.

I press the STOP button.

Okay, I guess that was a rhetorical question.

I remember when my husband and I were building a house. He wanted me to pick the exterior color. He showed his mother my swatches. She told him, “She’s going to RUIN that beautiful house!” He told me that she suggested gray or blue. I told him I thought gray was depressing and blue was boring. I won that round.

My mother-in-law and I always argued through my husband. I wish I could take back the continuous heartbreak I caused by making him the battlefield between his mother and me, the two people he loved most dearly.

I wish I could have seen myself clearly back then. I always thought I was right. I was a jackass. My mother-in-law was right, gray or blue would have been more appropriate for a house by the lake than the redwood color I picked.

I wish I knew things were impermanent back then. My husband and I never got to live in the house. He died of cancer the next year.

I press the PLAY button.

(Guided meditation excerpt from: “Guided Meditation on Immeasurable Equanimity,” Track 36 from “Arousing Bodhichitta, The Heart of the Enlightened Mind: The Bodhichitta Mengak Study Pack,” published by Rigpa.)

Oh no, poetry, haiku, run away

My Lama

mind serene

heart a volcano of love

is what I should be

This is the year

This is the year I write my book and become whatever I'm going to become.

Fixing Rigpa

When I was working for Rigpa, the buddhist group to which I belong, I frequently heard people (myself included) say, "We need to fix Rigpa" or, "Doing 'x' would fix Rigpa," or "Why doesn't 'x person or group' fix Rigpa?"

After much thought, reflection, blood, sweat, and tears, I have finally found the answer. The secret is, of course, in the teachings. The Buddha said that you can't cover the entire surface of the earth with leather, but you can cover your feet with leather instead.

Rigpa doesn't need fixing. We are what needs fixing. We spend our time trying to fix our problems, one after another. But there is no end to our problems because we live in samsara. Samsara is, by definition, a giant hairball of knotty problems. There's no way to fix it. The only thing we can fix is ourselves.

We join Rigpa to find a way out of samsara, out of the hairball we're choking on. Instead, we find hairballs here too. We get dismayed and think it shouldn't be that way. So we think up all sorts of ways to fix Rigpa and get really upset and frustrated when we can't.

We can't fix Rigpa because what one person likes, another dislikes.

I no longer live in a place with a Rigpa center, but there are a couple of Rigpa students nearby. So we've been getting together at each others' houses for Sangha Days. We all look forward to them and absolutely love them and they recharge us. We take turns reading the script out loud, watch the teachings, practice, and eat what we've all brought to share for lunch. What could be simpler?

I used to dread going to Sangha Days at Rigpa centers. Because our little group comes together with no expectations, no agendas, no habitual dysfunctional group dynamics, we have lots of space to just enjoy the teachings, have wonderful discussions, and work with ourselves during the practice. The organization called Rigpa doesn't even exist. But yet it does :-)

As we fix ourselves, Rigpa will also fix itself.