CONVERSATION WITH A Who are we really, and to whom do we pray?

In our last issue, the conversation between Ven. more effective person. So, yes, in one sense it's diffi- , freelance writer Lyn Siegel and psy- cult because you're all the time going another inch, chiatrist Dr Normal Safransky began with the another inch, another inch. It's easy to sink back into Australian-born nun's observations on karma and your comfort zone, isn't it? It's really hard to keep what life can be like for prison inmates — something moving, to keep accomplishing more internally and she knows well through her work with the Liberation externally. But you develop enthusiasm for the job, Prison Project. The story continues ... don't you? They call it joyful effort, or enthusiastic Q: With more and more people practicing mindful- perseverance. We don't have a choice: we must just ness and working on these negative qualities, do you keep moving, one step at a time. think human beings as a whole are becoming better At the same time, however, when you need a good people? sleep, take a good sleep, relax, look at the sky, as A: Not necessarily. Look at the world. More vio- Yeshe would say. It's not helpful to keep push- lence. Look at this country [America] alone. Look at ing in a neurotic way. I remember when I used to work the number of children born now who are experienc- at Wisdom years ago: I'd lie under my desk and just ing incredible suffering: kids who are on drugs already go to sleep if I needed to! by the age of five, kids with attention deficit disorder, Q: If people could awaken and realize that they kids who are violent, homeless kids. There are so have this potential, that would be fantastic, but so many more children now with mental suffering. You many don't seem able to rouse themselves. could say that the human race is going downhill, A: Yes, it's heartbreaking. It's how we all are. We couldn't you? have this terrible tendency to stay stuck in our misery. Q: What is the point if things don't get any better? When His Holiness the heard about the Why bother? amount of low self-esteem and hopelessness in our A: If you're alive, then you don't have any choice culture, he said, "That's a mental illness!" It really is. other than to practice virtue, to make yourself a better We have such a limited view of our own potential, and person, to try to help others. It doesn't matter what the I'm talking in the most ordinary sense. That's the outside world does. If I look into my mind from day to major enemy. My mother would always say to me, day, and I see that anger, jealousy, fear, and neuroses Ven. Robina Courtin: "The real point is to have a mind that is "You are your own worst enemy." It's so true. make me miserable, then do I have a choice? No. more steady, more controlled, more happy, more wise ..." Q: Which of the negative mental qualities is most Even if I just want to be happy, not to mention helping difficult for you to deal with? others to be happy, then the only thing I can choose is my life. A: In my life, anger, that kind of volatile energy, to be kind and loving and patient and generous. Q: As a Buddhist nun, continuously devoted to has been the strongest for me. For most of my life it Because they're the things that will bring me more helping others, how does your practice help you cope was as if anger was my middle name. It was my view sanity and contentment. Then, when you're doing the with personal issues? of Robina, so I grew up with this identity. And I'm not job yourself, you can help others do the same, one step A: Well, that's the whole point. There's this nice blaming other people. If we view ourselves as "angry," at a time. analogy in : A bird needs two wings: wis- it's reinforced by our behavior, and then that in turn Q: Many people have an idea that meditation and dom and compassion. And you can summarize all reinforces other people's view of us. We keep respond- embracing Buddhism will lead to calm and stillness, Buddhist practice into these two wings. The wisdom ing in the same broken-record way. When I first got yet you're clearly a high-energy individual who wing is all the work that you do on your own mind, involved with Buddhist psychology, it took me years approaches a variety of projects at high speed. knowing yourself, being your own therapist, under- to stop identifying myself as an angry person. And A: I think there are some pretty cliched ideas of standing your positive qualities and your negative slowly, slowly, it gives you the courage to see yourself what a good Buddhist should be like, and of what ones, sorting them out, and then learning on the basis differently. It has taken me many years, but I can cer- meditation is. The Tibetan word for meditation, gom, of that to develop the positive and diminish the nega- tainly see the progress. is "to become familiar." "Meditation" refers to a series tive. Obviously the immediate benefit of this is that Buddha really is a most amazing cognitive thera- of sophisticated psychological techniques — Buddha you become a better, wiser, more relaxed human pist, not joking. Basically he's saying that everything's didn't use the word "psychological" because it wasn't being. And then, on the basis of this, you are qualified in how we perceive it, interpret it. And that goes for coined then — that enable a person to familiarize them- to benefit others, which is the compassion wing. The ourselves more than anything. So: changing the way selves with the positive, appropriate states of mind. To immediate benefit of your practice is that it benefits we think — and Buddha goes to much subtler, more think that meditation simply calms you down is sim- you, but it qualifies you to benefit others. They com- refined levels of mind than we'd ever assert in the plistic. You don't need to sit looking holy to do that; pletely go together. materialistic models of mind — helps change the way you can just lie down and go to sleep. Q: Do you ever find yourself at a point where you we feel and therefore the way we behave. It's a very There are many techniques to help us get a handle don't feel like you have the strength to go on? logical, organic, and empowering process. on our mind. A natural consequence of that — and this A: In a sense, all the time! When you learn any- Q: I understand that Buddhists don't have a belief is the real point — is to have a mind that is more thing, whether you want to become a carpenter or a in a creator, but you talk about prayer and you talk steady, more controlled, more happy, more wise, more skater, all the time you're pushing yourself against about faith. I want to know what you have faith in and clear, more loving, more proactive, more beneficial. your limits, aren't you? You're getting out of your what do you pray to? That doesn't necessarily mean being more "slow" or comfort zone and you're trying to become better and A: That's a good point. The Buddha doesn't talk "quiet." The point isn't just to walk slowly and look better at what you're doing. And that's sometimes very about a creator, but Buddhists most certainly pray, like you're being this thing called "mindful?' His scary, very painful. You have to struggle all the time. I which seems a contradiction because the common Holiness the Dalai Lama is renowned for talking fast don't mean struggle in a neurotic way. But, all the view is that prayer is to a creator. and walking fast! time, one tries to become more effective, less lazy, less According to Buddhism, the "creative principle," if Q: With all of your busyness, do you ever miss the neurotic. That takes a lot of work. you like, is karma: that each individual living being is more contemplative form? All the time you continue to develop in this capaci- continuously experiencing the fruits of their own past A: No. I have my practice every day. It's a part of ty to become a buddha: to become a better, wiser, actions and is continuously creating their own future

December 2003/January 2004 23 experiences with every thought, word, and action. Our thoughts words, and actions are effectively "kannas," or actions, which leave seeds or imprints DEBATE in our own river of mental moments, our mind. These seeds ripen in the future as our experiences, A matter of contradiction good or bad. A creator doesn't even come into it. Buddha is certainly not a creator. He didn't invent karma, emptiness, the universe, sentient beings, or anything else. He's more like a scientist: he The hand slapping and foot stomping that are second to start us debating on topics from our Tuesday observed it to be so that things happen to living nature to monks in the Sera debate courtyard are night study group text, Entering the resounding in the large gompa at Institute in (Madyamakavatara by Chandrakirti). as Westerners come to grips with the After Ven. Fedor has finished his blah-blah ancient of debate. A report from Ven. (Fedor's term), we debate, or should I say, we try Tenzin Fedor, Damien Busby, Merilyn Jones, and to debate, one-on-one about the topic he taught. Libby Shields. Even if we end up just talking about it, we find plenty of questions — and somehow we learn some- Merilyn Jones: When Ven. Tenzin Fedor first came to thing. Tara Institute, two students approached him and asked Once a month we have a dam-ja debate. We sit for lessons in debate. The two, a young man of 22 and in a "U" formation. Two people sit in the hot seat, a woman of 63, both enthusiastic students, (bottom of the U) and one debater stands to chal- began debating in our smaller gompa — one very tall lenge them. The debater pays homage to with a large frame and one very small but full of and then posits a thesis; the defenders reply beans. Those of us who knew of the debaters began to "agree," "why," "reason not established," or "no get interested, because we could see how much it pervasion." The debater may not necessarily posit improved the way they conversed, and their enthusi- something that is true! asm was very contagious. The most noticeable benefit of debate is being When Ven. Fedor kindly offered to teach debate, able to train the pattern of your reasoning. we jumped at it, although we really did not know what Noticeable, because even after a small amount of we were in for. At first it was like someone had practice you notice that you are doing better at fol- jumped into our mind and completely scrabbled every- lowing your train of thought through. From prac- "We can all become a Buddha ... the potential Is Innate In all of us." thing topsy-turvy. It was s0000 challenging. ticing debate you can identify how really scattered Everything that we thought was reason was completely our thoughts can be — busily running from one beings according to the law of cause and effect, wrong! And the language — we thought we knew topic to another. Debate helps you to develop your karma; that things and beings don't have an inher- English.. .wrong! train of thought, keep on track, and notice when ent nature; that mind is a continuity of mental The debate class has been going now for two you allow your mind to run completely out of con- moments; and so on. years, with a core group of seventeen students. Classes trol. And this is after only a short time of debating! We can all become a buddha, Buddha says; the are generally once a month and we have been follow- We have been unbelievably fortunate to have potential for perfection is innate within all of us. If ing the text used in Sera, starting with colors, etc., that Ven. Fedor teaching us debate. His teaching style was translated into English by Daniel E Perdue. We is clear, and he is very approachable and an enthu- you're a living being — a "mind-possessor" or sem- chen in Tibetan — then you necessarily can become had reached the chapter of "Great Cause and Effect" siastic debater. We are very grateful. perfect. We can develop all the positive qualities early this year and then Doga asked Ven. Fedor When debate is over — we all go out to lunch. beyond which they can't be developed further and remove all the negative beyond which they can't be removed further. That's just how it is, Buddha says. When you're a buddha, you have fully developed the two wings of the bird. You've got the wisdom that literally sees everything that exists. Buddha says that everything is knowable and each of us has the potential to see, to cognize, everything. The compassion wing is the full development of this enormous empathy for all living beings as if they were oneself. The third quality is this immense power to effortlessly do whatever needs to be done to benefit all living beings, whose minds you see perfectly and for whom you have infinite compas- sion. You could say that this sounds a bit like the way some people describe God — omniscient, all-compas- sionate, omnipotent, pervading the universe. Well, that's Buddha. The difference, of course, is that we can all become it and that it's not Buddha's job to cre- ate anything. The relationship, therefore, that one has with the Buddha is more like the relationship of teacher and disciple, or of doctor and patient. I don't ask my music teachers to play the music for me; they show me how to manifest my own music. So prayer is reaching out to the Buddha, making strong requests to give inspira- tion so that I can become like that myself so that I, too, can benefit suffering beings.• In Tara institute's spacious gompa the debate continues. From left, Damien Busby, Claire Callinan, Christian Walsh, Llysse Velez. Standing: Andy bleinic. Backs to camera: Lynne Coleman and Nicole French.

24 MANDALA December 2003/January 2004