The empty boat

I had an interview with someone who said she couldn’t meditate; it was impossible because she had real-life problems. In the meditation we’re doing we’re trying to bring home the very supportive mes- sage that real-life problems are the material for wak- ing up, not the reason to stop trying. This is news you can use.

Today’s slogan is “Whatever you meet unexpect- edly, join with meditation.” This is a very interesting suggestion. These slogans are pointing out that we can awaken bodhichitta through everything, that nothing is an interruption. This slogan points out how interruptions themselves awaken us, how inter- ruptions themselves—surprises, unexpected events, bolts out of the blue—can awaken us to the experi- ence of both absolute and relative bodhichitta, to the open, spacious quality of our minds and the warmth of our hearts.

This is the slogan about surprises as gifts. These surprises can be pleasant or unpleasant; the main point is that they can stop our minds. You’re walking along and a snowball hits you on the side of the head. It stops your mind.

The slogan “Rest in the nature of alaya, the essence” goes along with this. Usually it is consid- ered a slogan for when you’re sitting on the cushion meditating; you can then rest your mind in its natu- ral, unbiased state. But the truth is that when the rug is pulled out the same thing happens: without any ef- fort on our part, our mind finds itself resting in the nature of alaya.

I was being driven in a car one day, when a horn honked loudly from behind. A car comes up by my window and the driver’s face is purple and he’s shak- ing his fist at me—my window is rolled down and so is his—and he yells, “Get a job!” That one still stops my mind.

The instruction is that when something stops your mind, catch that moment of gap, that moment of big space, that moment of bewilderment, that moment of total astonishment, and let yourself rest in it a lit- tle longer than you ordinarily might.

Interestingly enough, this is also the instruction on how to die. The moment of death is apparently a major surprise. Perhaps you’ve heard this word samadhi (meditative absorption), that we remain in samadhi at the moment we die. What that means is that we can rest our minds in the nature of alaya. We can stay open and connect with the fresh, unbi- ased quality of our minds, which is given to us at the moment of our death. But it’s also given to us throughout every day of our lives! This gift is given to us by the unexpected circumstances referred to in this slogan.

After the gap, when you’ve begun to talk to your- self again—”That horrible person” or “Wasn’t that wonderful that he allowed me to rest my mind in the nature of alaya?”—you could catch yourself and start to do tonglen practice. If you’re veering off toward anger, resentment, any of the more unwanted “nega- tive” feelings, getting really uptight and so forth, you could remember tonglen and the lojong logic and breathe in and get in touch with your feeling. Let the story line go and get in touch. If you start talking to yourself about what a wonderful thing just hap- pened, you could remember and send that out and share that sense of delight.

Usually we’re so caught up in ourselves, we’re hanging on to ourselves so tightly, that it takes a Mack truck knocking us down to wake us up and stop our minds. But really, as you begin to practice, it could just take the wind blowing the curtain. The surprise can be something very gentle, just a shift of attention. Something just catches your eye and your attention shifts, and you can rest your mind in the nature of alaya. When you start talking to yourself again, you can practice tonglen.

The surprise comes in pleasant and unpleasant forms—it doesn’t really matter how. The point is

that it comes out of the blue. You’re walking down the street, caught in tunnel vision—talking to your- self—and not noticing anything, and even the croak of a raven can wake you up out of your daydream, which is often very thick, very resentful. Something just pops it; a car backfires, and for a moment you look up and see the sky and people’s faces and traf- fic going by and the trees. Whatever is happening there, suddenly you see this big world outside of your tunnel vision.

I had an interesting experience of something sur- prising me like this on retreat. It was a very strong ex- perience of shunyata, the complete emptiness of things. I had just finished my evening practice. I had been practicing all day, after which you might think I would be in a calm, saintly state of mind. But as I came out of my room and started to walk down the hall, I saw that in our serving area someone had left dirty dishes. I started to get really angry.

Now, in this retreat we put our name on our dishes. Everyone has a plate and a bowl and a mug and a knife and a fork and a spoon, and they all have our name on them. So I was walking down and I was trying to see whose name was on those dishes. I was already pretty sure whose name was on them, because there was only one woman of our group of eight who would leave such a mess. She was always just leaving things around for other people to clean

up. Who did she think was going to wash these dishes, her mother? Did she think we were all her slaves? I was really getting into this. I was thinking, “I’ve known her for a long time, and everyone thinks she’s a senior practitioner, but actually she might as well have never meditated for the way she’s so in- considerate of everybody else on this planet.”

When I got to the sink, I looked at the plate, and the name on it was “Pema,” and the name on the cup was “Pema,” and the name on the fork was “Pema,” and the name on the knife was “Pema.” It was all mine! Needless to say, that cut my trip considerably. It also stopped my mind.

There’s a Zen story in which a man is enjoying him- self on a river at dusk. He sees another boat coming down the river toward him. At first it seems so nice to him that someone else is also enjoying the river on a nice summer evening. Then he realizes that the boat is coming right toward him, faster and faster. He be- gins to get upset and starts to yell, “Hey, hey, watch out! For Pete’s sake, turn aside!” But the boat just comes faster and faster, right toward him. By this time he’s standing up in his boat, screaming and shaking his fist, and then the boat smashes right into him. He sees that it’s an empty boat.

This is the classic story of our whole life situation. There are a lot of empty boats out there that we’re al- ways screaming at and shaking our fists at. Instead,

we could let them stop our minds. Even if they only stop our mind for one point one seconds, we can rest in that little gap. When the story line starts, we can do the tonglen practice of exchanging ourselves for others. In this way everything we meet has the po- tential to help us cultivate compassion and recon- nect with the spacious, open quality of our minds.