carry out smoothly and neatly.” But then what happens? As soon as you try to do something, you’re told, “Not today, tomorrow. No problem … it’ll happen … but not today.” Even if you present someone with a difficult job, they will say, “No problem. I’ll take care of it tomorrow.” At some point you realize that this is not like the United States, where people just say no. Here they say, “Sure! Yes! No problem.” And you think how wonderful it all is: “In two or three days I can do a lot!” Then you find out that “all right” actually means “not all right.” I believe a lot of you residents are familiar with this.
Some people come to Nepal with particular plans and goals in mind. A Dharma practitioner may think, “Okay, I have six months here. I will meet this teacher first, next that teacher, then this third teacher. I will request such and such teachings and receive them; then I will go practice in this or that holy place. I will have such and such realization and go home.”
If you are a foreign aid volunteer, you might think, “I’m going to carry out this particular project, which will be completed on such and such a date.” If you are a mountaineer, you might think, “I am going to climb this mountain and go trekking in that area. If there is extra time, then I’ll go to such and such a place.” You may have all sorts of different plans, but at the end of the visit you’d be doing well to have accomplished even 20 percent of what you set out to do. There is nothing to be done about this particular situation; it’s just an illustration of the habits of the planning mind. Meanwhile, the Nepalese people are quite content. They are easygoing and happy to smile and say, “All right, no problem. Tomorrow, no problem. Five o’clock, okay?” Then you wait until five o’clock, but nothing happens. They say, “Sorry, something came up. Tomorrow, two o’clock, no problem.” Also the next day, nothing.
Foreigners in Nepal are faced with a confrontation between their habit of having everything on a fixed schedule and their consequent assumption that things will happen on time, and how it actually is here in reality. Things are much looser in Nepal, not so fixed. If we somehow manage during those six months to let go of our rigid expectations just a little bit, we may actually be happier people when we go home, even though we didn’t accomplish much. But if we start to find fault and obsess about what didn’t happen, we’ll find only one thing after another that did not work out. That could make us unhappy. On the other hand, we have the opportunity to become happier by learning not to care so much.
What I would like to convey here is that if we aim to learn how to be at ease with ourselves and our surroundings in a way that is content, open, and free, then Nepal is a pretty good place to learn that. To be rigidly goal-oriented and want to nail everything down according to a certain schedule—“I want to achieve this now; I want to finish that on time”—only makes us more stressed here. To import our rigid Western scheduling mind-set and superimpose it on the chaotic reality of the East is an exercise in frustration. We must know this distinction. Here in the apparent chaos of Nepal, the illusion of this world seems more obvious. It is frustrating to try to make the illusion more concrete, because it is ultimately impossible. We cannot solidify an illusion; it is not its nature.
The basic quality of illusion is bewilderment. Illusion immediately becomes more workable when we acknowledge it as simply an illusion. The Western habit is to work against the grain and try to organize the illusory into something solid and structured. This approach is fundamentally problematic, because it is inherently futile. It seems that many people are fond of trying to frustrate themselves. In the stressful attempt to nail down the illusory nature of things, our chance to be at ease, spacious, awake, and free, which already exists within ourselves, gets lost. We lose track of it.
I would like us to discover that there is a way in which we don’t get totally caught up in obsessing with objects—a way to be in our own nature. Not only being able to be free and easy in ourselves, but also not lose that while moving about in our daily activities. Moreover, there is a certain radiance that could come forth from being in this natural state. This radiance can manifest as compassion.
A lot of people talk about compassion in this world. It’s a word that’s on many people’s lips, and certainly it is very important. If we truly succeed in being a real bodhisattva, someone who has the enlightened frame of mind, that is wonderful. But for this to actually happen, many factors have to be lined up. The first stumbling block to bodhichitta being genuinely present in our minds is our tendency to be preoccupied with objects we perceive, in the sense of our attention focusing in a more rigid way on “me getting that.” There is no real rest from this obsession. We are constantly fixating on objects and becoming tired from this effort. Our experience is a mixture of fixing our mind on different things, one after another, and being worn out by doing so. Because we are almost incessantly preoccupied with this, that, and the next thing, there is hardly any free time to be there for others and care for them. True compassion gets no room in one’s mind. That is the first obstacle: preoccupation with personal gain.
What does a novice bodhisattva, someone who is trying to be a bodhisattva, do in this situation? First, realize that it is necessary to calm down this busyness, this constant preoccupation with one object after the other. Allow this to relax a bit, so that the qualities of shamatha have a chance to emerge in your mind. These qualities are generally termed bliss, clarity, and nonthought. Through training, they become more present in your mind. Perhaps “being at ease” fits better than “bliss” in this context. The more we are at ease, the more we are willing to open up a bit. When our attitude is not oriented exclusively around “me,” we experience a greater readiness to share. There is a sense of wanting all our friends to be at ease that gradually expands to encompass the whole population around us, the whole region.
First, a calming down is required, followed by the mind training in wishing others well and caring about their well-being. All this grows from being at ease with ourselves—in other words, being free of suffering and not feeling so needy ourselves. Only when we are no longer so needy can we can start to care. In order for bodhichitta to be genuine, we need a basic sense of calm and ease before the possibility of training our minds to care for others becomes feasible.
It seems to me that the process follows this sequence: If we are not calmed down, it means we are still busy. This busyness pervades our whole system, including the channels and the energies that move through the channels. These become speedy and restless, drying up our vital essences. Without calming down, there is no sense of being at ease. The calmer we are, the more we begin to relax and settle. This makes room for the energies to circulate more freely and our essences to saturate our system more. As this occurs, we feel a natural delight that can turn into compassion. This being at ease with ourselves, accepting or having a certain affection for our own state of being, can be steadily expanded to include others. This is the true beginning of meditation practice.
The genuine warmth that grows out of being at ease with oneself is a little different from the idea of being a bodhisattva. The formula for the latter is the thought “I want to bring all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment.”
That idea is one aspect. Another is the actuality of how we really feel while we practice. There can seem to be quite a large disparity between the two! By relaxing and feeling a little bit at ease, are we truly establishing all beings in the state of enlightenment? This seems somewhat presumptuous, if not a bit outrageous. Still, we have to start somewhere in order for it to come true. We believe, “I am benefiting all sentient beings right now,” but it is not really true. Realistically speaking, all that we can do is start somewhere, be relaxed, have a sense of delight, and expand it to become compassion that can then gradually become all-encompassing.
To start cultivating some empathy for yourself, begin with your right arm: “What a nice little arm. Cute little fingers too. It used to look better, though, when I was younger. Ah, poor little fingers—what to do? They’re there; this is the way they are.” Then you have a left arm, legs, a body, and so on. All of these are okay; they are all there. Inside too—lungs, heart, inner
