Review
We are going through these graded stages of the mind in order to reach the spiritual goals as defined in Buddhism. These are, first, to improve our future lives and to ensure that we continue to have precious human lives, then, to get liberation from uncontrollably recurring rebirth, and, finally, to gain the enlightened state of a Buddha.
We can progress through these stages in two ways. Initially, we work with these stage by stage, without actually knowing what is coming next, until we have developed each of these three motivations to a certain extent. However, it is very rare these days that people don’t know what is coming ahead. So, the other way is to have a general idea of the whole path and, with our minds aimed ultimately at the enlightened state of a Buddha, to go through each of the stages very methodically, seeing them as stepping stones on the way to enlightenment, rather than as ultimate goals in themselves.
Initial Scope
The Precious Human Rebirth
The aim of the initial scope is to improve our rebirths – the assumption here being that there is such a thing as rebirth – and, particularly, to continue to have precious human rebirths so that we can continue on the spiritual path. So, we started by thinking about the precious human rebirths that we have now, seeing how rare such a rebirth is and what having it actually means, especially compared with the most horrible states. These states would be an enormous obstacle to being able to make any type of spiritual progress. We appreciated that we don’t have rebirth in such states now. Instead, we have a temporary freedom from that, a temporary respite. “Temporary,” I think, has to be emphasized here because, looked at from the perspective of beginningless rebirths, the freedom that we have is really only temporary. Given that we have beginningless confusion, beginningless unawareness and disturbing emotions, despite also having Buddha-nature, we have undoubtedly been in worse rebirth states far more often than better rebirth states. So, this is a very rare and temporary respite. It is filled with rich opportunities, and it’s very important to take advantage of them.
There are many beings who are born now as humans, and there are various teachings available in so many countries now. But how many people are really receptive to them? And how many people are not just groupies who only go to teachings when some high lama comes and who don’t actually do any sincere work on themselves to overcome their personality disorders, problems and shortcomings and to develop their good qualities? There are very, very few who actually do that type of work. So, precious human rebirth implies that we are not only open to the Dharma but that we are also sincere about actually applying it, and applying it not just on a superficial level of merely doing rituals but on a deeper level of actually working on ourselves, developing our good qualities and overcoming our shortcomings.
Death and Impermanence
We saw that the causes for a precious human rebirth are very rare indeed. It’s difficult to attain, and it’s very easily lost. So, we think in terms of death. We are all going to die, and we have no idea when; it could be in the next moment. At the time of death, nothing is going to be of much comfort to us – if we’re thinking in terms of future lives – except the positive habits that we have built up from the Dharma, the preventive measures we’ve taken to avoid things getting worse. All our friends, all our money in the bank, etc. won’t be any comfort to us at all because we can’t take any of that with us. On the other hand, the positive habits that we’ve built up will continue as part of our mental continuums, in a sense, and shape the talents, tendencies and connections that we will have in the future.
Dreading Worse States of Rebirth
Then we think in terms of the types of rebirths that we could have if we have not built up strong preventive measures. These would be quite horrible. We take that quite seriously – the suffering, unhappiness and obstacles our mental continuums could experience. Whether we think in terms of physical beings living in the various geographic locations as they are described in the abhidharma is, in a sense, not the important point. The important point is thinking about how our mental continuums could experience unbelievable unhappiness and suffering. The pain experienced by these beings is much more intense than what the human body can endure before it goes unconscious.
So, we think about these hell realms and the types of suffering that the beings experience there – being trapped in it. That’s an important aspect in terms of the connotation of the Tibetan term for these hell realms (dmyal-ba), which means “difficult to get out of.” The Sanskrit term for them (naraka) implies no joy whatsoever – so, “joyless realms.” “Trapped beings in the joyless realms” is how I like to refer to them. Then we think of the clutching ghosts. “Clutching” is the connotation of the Tibetan word for this realm (yi-dvags). They clutch to get even a morsel of food or a drop of drink, but they can’t get any of that. Then we think of a creeping creature. “Creeping” is the connotation of the Tibetan word for animal (dud-‘gro). It connotes a being that goes around bent over toward the ground and that lives in constant fear of being attacked by others, being eaten alive and so on. We think how horrible that would be.
Safe Direction
We then look to see whether there is a way to avoid such a rebirth. We see that we can avoid that by putting a positive direction in our lives. So, with a healthy sense of fear, not wanting to experience these terrible situations, but also with a great confidence and trust that there is a way to avoid that, we put this safe direction in our lives. That’s what refuge means. By going in that safe direction, we protect ourselves from experiencing these worse fates.
The direction that we want to go in is indicated by the ultimate Dharma Gem. This refers to what the Buddhas and arya beings have achieved: (1) true stoppings of all the factors on their mental continuums that perpetuate samsara – so, unawareness, the disturbing emotions, karmic forces and potentials, and so on are gone forever; (2) the understandings and transformations of mind, the so-called true paths, that bring those true stoppings about and that result from those stoppings. This is what we want to achieve. That’s the direction we want to go in. Going toward enlightenment is even further, but this is the first, major step: liberation.
The Buddhas have achieved these true stoppings and true pathway minds in full and the arya beings have attained them in part. That’s very encouraging because when we look at the examples of the aryas, we can see that achieving liberation and enlightenment is a steady process. They are a little bit easier to relate to. They are our helpers, as they say, along the way.
Refraining from Destructive Behavior According to the Principles of Karma
To go in that direction, the first thing we have to do is to make sure that we don’t get worse rebirths. To do that, we have to stop acting in destructive ways. That means that when impulses come up to act in destructive, negative ways, we need to exercise self-control, to refrain from acting on them, based on understanding what the results would be on us in terms of the negative tendencies and habits that are built up and reinforced on our mental continuums if we act in these destructive ways.
So, we had our big discussion of karma. We saw that what we experience is something that we have to deconstruct. It comes from a whole network of causes and circumstances. It’s not that just because we committed a certain action in the past that we are therefore experiencing this type of suffering now. And of course, we don’t add onto it that the suffering we are experiencing is a punishment, that we are guilty, and so on. None of that is there in Buddhism. Even so, it’s important not to simplify the whole process of behavioral cause and effect, reducing it just to one cause bringing about one effect. This is a misunderstanding of the noble truth of causation, the cause of suffering.
There are many, many factors, zillions of factors that are involved in why we act in a certain way. There are zillions more factors that, as time goes on, affect the strength of the karmic force, the karmic potentials, that are built up by what we do. Then there are another zillion causes and circumstances involved in bringing about the circumstances in which the karmic potentials that we’ve built up will ripen. So, everything has to be deconstructed so that we don’t look at it in terms of projecting solid, truly established existence onto everything, as if things were just standing out there, establishing themselves, unrelated to anything.
At the conclusion of that discussion, which is the conclusion of the initial scope, what have we accomplished? What we have accomplished is the state of mind of this initial scope. It is one with which, being totally convinced of future lives, we are definitely going to try to take advantage of the opportunity that we have now and not blow it, as we would say in colloquial English, not waste it. We are going to take advantage of it by ensuring that we continue having it so that we can make better use of it. But, first, we at least have to get it to continue. We are going to do that by going in this safe direction and working to eliminate all the disturbing factors on our mental continuums and to build up the positive ones. The way we do that, as a start, is to exercise self-control based on discriminating awareness, understanding that if we act destructively, we will cause more and more problems, more and more limitations for ourselves.
This is the initial level, one that should not at all be trivialized. It is not at all easy to feel absolutely sincerely that we are doing something to guarantee that our future lives will not be horrible. Now, of course, on top of exercising self-control, we could be doing positive things to try to bring about positive circumstances for our future lives. But it’s important not to think that we only need to do positive things for future lives and that we can get away with doing negative things. It’s important to think in terms of both. Here, on the initial scope, the main emphasis is on refraining from negative things – negative ways of acting, speaking, and thinking. Negative ways of thinking, obviously, are much more difficult than negative ways of acting and speaking.
Intermediate Scope
Aiming to Overcome All Three Types of Suffering, Not Just the Suffering of Suffering
On the intermediate scope, we want to go deeper. Here, we are looking not only at achieving a stopping of the causes of the suffering of suffering, as it’s called, the suffering of pain and unhappiness, which we would experience most intensely with lower rebirths – though even with human rebirths, there is the suffering of unhappiness and pain. We are also looking at achieving a stopping of the causes of the suffering of change, the suffering of our ordinary happiness, which never lasts, never satisfies, and turns into unhappiness. For example, when eating our favorite food, we get sick if we eat too much. When staying out in the sun, we get too hot and sunburned if we stay out too long. It’s a type of happiness that will eventually turn to suffering. So, it doesn’t satisfy. It’s not everlasting. It’s not stable, not reliable. So, we want to overcome the suffering of our ordinary type of happiness because we would like something better. We’d like some sort of everlasting type of happiness that doesn’t turn into unhappiness, that doesn’t leave us unsatisfied and so on.
More than that, we want to overcome the basis for experiencing these first two types of suffering. In other words, we want to overcome the suffering of continuing rebirth, uncontrollably recurring rebirth, which is the basis for experiencing these first two types of suffering. So, we look at the true causes of these true problems and how to overcome them. But first, we look at the specific sufferings of samsaric rebirth. That’s what we are doing now. Then, later, we will look at their causes.
The sufferings are first described in terms of the general sufferings of samsara, which we have covered. Then they're described in terms of the specific sufferings of the three better rebirth states: those of the humans; those of the so-called quasi gods, anti-gods, or would-be divine – the asuras; and those of the gods.
Suffering of Humans (Continued)
We have been discussing the sufferings of humans. We have gone through the sufferings of birth, old age, sickness, and death. Last time, we discussed in quite a bit of detail what it would be like to be free of samsara, in other words, to be a liberated being, an arhat. I know for myself that just to have a presentation of what one wants to be free of is not quite enough. One also wants to know, “Well, then what? What am I left with?” That’s why I emphasized this question about what it would actually be like to be an arhat, a liberated being.
In any case, now we can go on with the rest of the presentation of these sufferings of a human rebirth.
Suffering of Being Parted from What We Like
The next suffering is the suffering of being parted from what we like. Well, we all know that one, don’t we? What do we like?
Participant: People.
Dr. Berzin: People! Do we get parted from them?
Participant: When we move.
Dr. Berzin: When we move, when they move, when other things are going on in their lives. For instance, we can have a very good friend who gets into a relationship with someone. Then what happens? They don’t have time for us in any more. We would like to be with them, but we get parted from them.
Participant: Or they die.
Dr. Berzin: They could die, of course. Death is there; sickness is there.
Participant: There is also the fear that I might be parted at some point.
Dr. Berzin: That is known as the fear of abandonment, which is a very heavy emotional/psychological problem for many people. “I am going to be abandoned.” That’s a very interesting topic.
First, we should think just in general about getting parted from what we like. And don’t just think on an ordinary level – like going to the restaurant and finding out that it is all out of your favorite food. Then we will look at abandonment since that is a really interesting topic.
[meditation]
Please try to consider whether what we like is always healthy for us. By healthy, I mean not just physically healthy but emotionally and mentally healthy.
[meditation]
So, tell me, what is the cause of suffering from being parted from what we like? Why do we suffer? It is a fact that we will be parted from what we like because of impermanence. So why do we suffer?
Participant: Because we don’t like impermanence.
Dr. Berzin: Let’s go a little bit deeper.
We Are Attached to What We Like
Participant: Generally, it’s because of attachment.
Dr. Berzin: Exactly. We are attached to what we like. And what is the definition of attachment?
Participant: We exaggerate the positive qualities.
Dr. Berzin: We exaggerate the positive qualities. Exactly. And we ignore the negative qualities. So, then we don’t want to let go.
Participant: And we superimpose qualities that are not there.
Dr. Berzin: Absolutely. Attachment can also be attachment to this life.
Participant: Suffering comes because we think we need something. We think we really need this thing to be happy.
Dr. Berzin: Oh, very good! We suffer because we think that we need these things in order to be happy. “I need to have my music. If I don’t have my MP3 player, my iPod,” or whatever it is, “I can’t be happy. I have to have it all the time.” We think that we need these things. But do we really need them? Are there certain things that we do really need and certain things that we don’t? What do we, in fact, need?
Participant: I need food, shelter…
Dr. Berzin: Right, basic needs: food, shelter, clothing, air.
Participant: Social contact.
Dr. Berzin: Yes, social contact.
Participant: And constructive actions.
Dr. Berzin: Well, we’re just talking about what we need for survival. So, there are certain things that we do need.
There are two aspects here. One is the “me,” and the other is the thing that I need. We could exaggerate the “me”: “Me, me, me – solid ‘me.’ I can’t possibly live without this or that.” So, we are obsessed with ourselves and very self-centered: “I have to have this; I have to have that,” etc. Then there’s the object, which we may or may not need. And even if the object is something that we really do need, like shelter, we could exaggerate how much of it we need. How large a house do we have to have?
Participant: Ten years ago, people could live easily without MP3 players.
Dr. Berzin: Right. I am old enough, more than old enough, to remember when people could live very well without computers, even without electric typewriters. I did my PhD thesis, all 700 pages, on a mechanical typewriter with carbon paper. If you make a mistake, you have to do the whole page over again.
Participant: What you think you need can be influenced by what your peers, the people around you have.
Dr. Berzin: Right! That’s one of the causes, one of the six, for the disturbing emotions to arise: the influence of others. “Everybody else has the latest fashion. I’m not cool if I don’t have this fashion.”
And then we are parted from what we like, such as losing our jobs or even our homes. These are serious losses. So, we could ask, “Why shouldn’t we suffer? Why shouldn’t we feel unhappy about losing our jobs or our homes?” Ooh, now we tread on difficult ground, don’t we?
It’s sad when these things happen. When we lose a loved one, for example, it’s sad. That brings up an interesting question: Would an arhat feel sad? Or would they feel like Spock from Star Trek and have no feeling whatsoever? Is that what we are aiming for?
I think there is a difference. It’s sad when somebody dies. It’s sad when we lose our homes. It’s sad when we lose this or that. But that doesn’t mean that we have to be unhappy.
Participant: Maybe it’s a matter of not ruminating on the loss.
Dr. Berzin: What does it mean to ruminate? It’s thinking, “Me, me, me,” and making a big deal out of what I have lost. Now, losing your home or losing your job is a big deal. I don’t mean to trivialize it in anyway. But…
Participant: It sort of depends on how much the “me” is active.
Dr. Berzin: It depends on how much the “me” is active and so on.
An ideal Buddhist way of facing such things would be to accept the reality of the situation. We may feel sad to a certain extent, which is largely a function of how long we feel sad. As ordinary beings, we will feel sad. Sadness will come up from time to time to time. We lose our wives, our husbands or our parents, and years later, all of a sudden, a feeling of sadness and the thought, “how much I miss them,” comes up. This is quite natural, given that we are samsaric beings.
I remember my mother. She died fifteen years ago. My mother was a wonderful woman, a very inspiring lady. Do I feel sad? No, I think the opposite: I rejoice how wonderful she was and think of the good things. I don’t think, “Poor me, I have lost her.” That’s the difference. So, we accept the reality. But now what? Now what do I do? I have lost my job. Now what do I do? I try to find a solution, rather than ruminate, as you say, about “poor me” and my loss. The more that we think in terms of “poor me” and my loss, the unhappier we are going to be. Naturally, there will be sadness, but the main thing is to find a solution.
Dealing with Loss by Changing the Basis for Labeling “Me”
There’s something that I always advise when people are in situations where they are parted from what they like – let’s say a relationship. A relationship ends. Either we break up with the person or the person dies. Up until then, the basis for labeling “me” has been the relationship. We have been labeling “me” in terms of a couple, being a member of a couple. We took that as our identity. Well, that can be our conventional identity; however, if we take that as our “true” identity – truly established: “That’s who I am” – then, when the relationship is no longer there as a presently happening basis for labeling “me,” we get stuck in the past, and we suffer more and more.
The way to overcome that, to get unstuck, is to label “me” in terms of what comes after the relationship has broken up. Now, of course, there is a history. The “me” is labeled on the whole history. But make it current. Bring it up to date. Then, when we get into new relationships or something else new happens in our lives, all of a sudden, we find that it’s much easier to deal with the loss because now we have a changed basis for labeling “me.” So, getting over the loss just is a matter of time and building up enough of a new history on which to label “me.”
Participant: Not necessarily a new relationship.
Dr. Berzin: Right. A big mistake we tend to make is to label the “me” in terms of just one aspect of our lives or one aggregate, like the body, whereas the basis for labeling “me” is everything that’s going on in our lives – education, job, family, friends, athletic life, and so on. It’s not just one little aspect. So, making the basis for labeling “me” as broad and as realistic as possible is very, very important. If we continue to label “me” in terms of “this is what I need. This is what I must have. This is who I am. And now I am parted from it. Aah!”
Participant: Another classic example is retirement, no?
Dr. Berzin: Yes. There are some people, of course, who can’t wait to retire because they hate their jobs and are very happy to finally be able to relax and have free time. But there are others who are very, very attached to their occupations. It’s the same thing when sickness or old age causes us to be parted from what we like. “I like to do sports, but I can’t do it anymore because my back hurts,” or, “I like to go dancing, but I can’t dance the way that people dance nowadays” – this type of thing.
Participant: When I was in the UK for an extended time, I start thinking in English. Normally, I think quickly and very precisely, but due to the lack of my language skills, I couldn’t think as quickly and precisely as I am used to doing in German. So, then my self-identity got a bit shaky.
Dr. Berzin: This, I think, is interesting because people from Europe, much more than people from the United States, speak several languages, not just one. Does one have a different identity when speaking different languages? I speak quite a few languages. Do I come across differently in different languages? Certainly. I do in the sense that I can speak much more easily and explain myself much more precisely in English than I can in German. Also, certain languages like Tibetan have levels of politeness, formality and so on that are not found in English and that introduce a whole different aspect to one’s personality.
It’s quite interesting: Who am I? Again, it gets into the basis for labeling “me.” But let’s try to stick to our topic.
Participant: Well, I am very much identified with my brain functions, which I was parted from when I was speaking in English.
Dr. Berzin: You say you were parted from your normal thinking functions when you were in a completely different language environment. That’s very true. You were parted from what you like. That kind of thing gets even stronger as one gets older. One’s memory is no longer so good. One’s mindfulness goes. It’s amazing how it goes! I notice it so often in myself. I go to take something out of the closet that’s next to the refrigerator where I keep dry goods, and instead of opening the closet door, I open the refrigerator door – without even thinking.
When my mother was at a retirement village in Florida, she had a very lovely neighbor who used to say that the only way to deal with old age was just to laugh at it.
Participant: To laugh at it?
Dr. Berzin: We have to laugh when we do things like that. Otherwise, we cry!
So – being parted from what we like.
The Fear of Being Parted from What We Like – Issues of Abandonment
This spills over into the topic that I said was very interesting to look at, which is the fear of abandonment, the fear of being parted from what we like. What is that all about? Let’s think about it.
[meditation]
Why does it cause us, for instance, to stay in unhealthy relationships? Because we are afraid that if we lose it, we’ll have nothing!
[meditation]
OK, what is fear of abandonment all about?
Participant: I think it comes down to control and to a fear of groundlessness. When we lose whatever it is, we have to acknowledge that things are not in our control.
Dr. Berzin: So, if we keep what we like, we have a feeling that we’re in control of the situation. If we are parted from what we like, we feel that things are no longer under our control. So, the fear of being abandoned is a fear of losing control.
Participant: I think, also, that we’re generally in the habit of constantly seeking to keep things comfortable for ourselves.
Dr. Berzin: We try to keep everything comfortable – or in order. Mr. Science, what about entropy? Do the laws of entropy say that things will go to order or disorder?
Participant: To disorder. You need to put in a lot of energy to keep things the way you like.
Dr. Berzin: So, according to the laws of entropy, we have to put in a tremendous amount of energy in order to have things more and more ordered.
Participant: So much energy.
Dr. Berzin: That’s true in life as well, isn’t it? We have to put a lot of energy into making relationships work, etc. However, can we ever be in control of what happens? Or is that a myth? It’s a myth that we can be completely in control because there are a million things that affect what happens to us. So, it’s an inflation of the “me” to think that we are in control of everything that happens and that whatever happens, whether good or bad, is due to me.
Are there any other aspects to fearing abandonment and wanting to be in control?
Participant: When my husband comes home late without telling me, I get slightly nervous that something might have happened. So, I am aware of needing some kind of control, but I exaggerate it.
Dr. Berzin: It could also be one’s child, in which case, one might feel even more out of control.
Participant: I’m afraid that there might have been an accident.
Dr. Berzin: You worry and so on. But is there a feeling of having been abandoned?
Participant: No.
Dr. Berzin: “If something terrible happened to my child, my wife or my husband, how could I go on?”
Participant: No, it’s not that.
Dr. Berzin: No, I mean that it could be that. That would be a fear of abandonment, a fear of losing someone.
Participant: I think that that falls into the delusion that we have – that that which fulfills us is external to us.
Dr. Berzin: So, if it’s external and we lose it, we feel abandoned.
What about a child who feels abandoned when the parents divorce? They feel abandoned by whomever it is that moves out, the father or the mother. Then they carry that feeling of having been abandoned with them into adulthood and fear that they will be abandoned again. I think this is a very, very common example.
Participant: Your example brings up something that I was thinking about, which is that this suffering is about having difficulty dealing with reality, first of all, because you get afraid of something that didn’t happen. It can happen with a relationship – that what you like about the person is not even what this person really is. So, it’s not a true relationship. It’s just about me, me, me – what feelings this person brings up in me.
Dr. Berzin: What you’re saying is that often our fear of abandonment – of losing what we like, being parted from it – is based on worrying about something that could be a complete projection. My child or my partner comes home late, and I think that there must have been an accident. There must have been this or that that happened. But it is all based on fantasy and projection. So, we are not dealing with the reality of “I just don’t know.” But then not knowing gets into not having control over what’s going on. The emphasis, then, is on me. “Ahh! I can’t deal with this!”
Also, the other aspect that you mentioned is that, in a relationship, what we are often doing is projecting qualities onto the other person that aren’t even there – “they’re the perfect companion,” and so on when they are not. Then we’re afraid that we are going to lose that, that we are going to be parted from that.
Participant: Being in love is biochemically very similar to an addiction.
Dr. Berzin: Being in love, our chemist friend here points out, is biochemically very much like an addiction, which means we suffer when we’re parted. We have withdrawal pains.
Participant: We have attachment also to our fantasies, to the concepts of what we want for ourselves.
Dr. Berzin: “I would like to be a successful actor in Hollywood,” for example. We get parted from our fantasy when it doesn’t happen – which was, again, just a complete projection and myth.
Participant: So, maybe when your parents break up or someone goes away, you have to start dealing with reality and learn that you don’t really need those things.
Dr. Berzin: So, it’s OK to feel sad but not to feel that we can’t live without them. Life does go on.
But what about the example of the child that feels abandoned when the parents divorce? Many children do. One of the parents moves out, and the child only sees that parent every other Saturday or something like that. It’s very difficult to know, really, how best to help the child in that type of situation. But what about when the child grows up and continues to have a fear of abandonment in any relationship that they get into?
Participant: Psychotherapy.
Dr. Berzin: But let’s apply a Buddhist point of view. Let’s be Buddhist psychotherapists. What would we need to work on? What’s the problem here? There’s the problem of projection to start with. My partner is not my mother or father who abandoned me – and, actually, my parent didn’t really abandon me. Usually, the child also thinks that it’s their fault that the parents divorce.
Participant: I would say that there are so many factors involved in whatever happens. So, when something happens, it couldn’t be all my fault.
Dr. Berzin: Right. This is the point that I was making before – that we tend to think in simplistic terms that whatever happens is due to me. So, if we’re in an unhealthy relationship, for instance, we think, “I’d better shut up because if I say something wrong, it’s going to be my fault that the relationship breaks up.” So, then we tolerate all sorts of horrible conduct on the part of the other person. This also is part of the fear of abandonment – thinking that everything is always my fault and never the fault of the other one.
Participant: But you can also apply what you said, your advice for people whose relationships break up – that they should rethink what they think the “me” is because they have always been thinking that the “me” was attached to something or to someone.
Dr. Berzin: As she says, if a relationship breaks up or whatever and we suffer, we really need to think about what our concept of “me” is. This, I think, is what is behind feelings of abandonment. The feeling of abandonment is a feeling of this solidly existent “me” that somehow establishes its identity – and existence, even – in terms of a specific relationship, and that is afraid that if that relationship ends, that “me” will no longer exist. This nihilist thinking could be one reason why there is the fear of abandonment and the suffering of being parted, or even just imagining being parted, from what we like, which we’re probably exaggerating anyway. We’re probably just exaggerating the thing we like or just projecting what we think will make us happy. It’s a very complex issue, isn’t it?
Participant: It’s a very complex issue. And I would emphasize that adults who have had a fear of being abandoned ever since childhood need psychotherapy. I wouldn’t recommend that they do meditations on voidness. It’s like if you have a terrible toothache… well, you could meditate on the voidness of the self, but it would be better to go to a dentist.
Dr. Berzin: I would agree that just trying to meditate on the problem by oneself is probably not going to work. It might cause even more problems because of not having any guidance. We need guidance. We need to work with somebody who can suggest ways in which to deal with the problem and who can help us do that. That person could be a therapist. Could it be a spiritual teacher, a Buddhist spiritual teacher? I think this is where we get into some problems.
The traditional role of a Buddhist teacher – if we look at it in a Tibetan context – is just to give the working material. We then work on it by ourselves. A Buddhist teacher is not somebody we go to, to tell all our problems to. We listen to the teacher. We don’t spend all our time telling the teacher our problems. This is confusing for Westerners because they like to look to Buddhist teachers as therapists. But the therapist and the Buddhist teacher have quite different roles. So, yes, if people have personal issues that they need to talk out, I think that it is undoubtedly better that they go to a therapist, rather than to a Buddhist teacher, who really is not trained to take on that role. So, I would agree with you.
Participant: I think it’s also contextual. In past centuries, before there were psychologists, there were priests and rabbis to whom one could go.
Dr. Berzin: In the West, there is a tradition of spiritual leaders being priests or rabbis and so on. Is a Buddhist spiritual teacher a priest or a rabbi? No.
Participant: But maybe the people who grew up in a Buddhist kind of society, where they had different ideas about the “me” and all that, already had kind of a preparation ground.
Dr. Berzin: You’re saying that people in Asia grew up in Buddhist societies in which the concepts of individuality, of the importance of the “me” as opposed to the importance of the family, and so on are very, very different. Also, most Asians don’t speak very openly at all about their emotions, about how “I feel” and so on. So, the situation is quite different. That’s absolutely true.
But when it comes to Western Buddhist teachers, I must say, there are quite a number of them who are also trained as psychologists. So, again, the roles get mixed.
But even as a therapist, how would one approach the problem of abandonment, being parted from what one likes, and the fear of being parted from what one likes?
Participant: You have to learn acceptance.
Dr. Berzin: That’s right.
I have a psychiatrist friend who uses a particular example. She uses it particularly with people who have had terrible childhoods – the parents are alcoholic and divorced; there are drug problems, crime problems, and so on. These are teenagers who have grown up in the inner city of one of the tough cities in America. The example is that we are given a voucher to get some free orange juice. So, we have the right to get a free orange juice. But when we go to get it, we see that there’s no more orange juice. So, what do we do? Do we just get angry and shoot the person at the cash register or smash the empty orange juice machine? (The teenagers she deals with are into quite a lot of violence.) So, here the situation is that we had the right to have a good childhood, to have a happy family, to have parents who stayed together and took care of us. We had that right. But sorry – all out of orange juice. So, now we have to accept it in a sense and somehow get something else. She uses very down-to-earth examples.
Participant: I’d like to go back to your question about what, from a psychological point of view, is behind the fear of abandonment. You said that from a Buddhist perspective, the way you define yourself could be behind it. A psychologist would maybe say that a lack of self-esteem is behind this because you have, from an early age on, just defined yourself negatively, as being the result of the break-up situation – so, you know, no orange juice. I don’t know that you feel that there’s not much there, that you feel this voidness, this nihilistic thing.
Dr. Berzin: So, from a Western psychological point of view, an adult who is dealing with feelings of abandonment due to the parents having gotten divorced when they were a child would, instead of thinking in nihilistic terms like, “If I lose this relationship, I don’t exist at all,” think more in terms of low self-esteem – for instance, “My parents broke up because of me. I’m bad,” and so on. That negative self-image then gets carried over into a feeling that “of course, this person is going to abandon me because I’m so bad.” So, again, from a Western psychological point of view, one would work on one’s self-image – which is also a very Buddhist thing in terms of working on Buddha-nature factors and stuff like that and not identifying with these shortcomings that everybody has.
I think that though the terminology and methods used by Buddhists and therapists may be different, the principle is not so terribly different. This is why I said that the difference between a session with a therapist and one with a traditional Buddhist teacher is that the session with the therapist is all about us. We talk about our personal problems with a therapist. Traditionally, one doesn’t do that with a Buddhist teacher. A Buddhist teacher gives the material, and then we work with it. If we have questions, he or she will answer the questions.
Accepting the Fact of Impermanence
Participant: One way one can deal with this fear of abandonment is to do like it says in the koan, “Death can come at any time, so relax.” The end of a relationship, the end of this pressure, or the end of this or that is going to come, so relax.
Dr. Berzin: That is a koan that I often quote. It means that we need to accept the fact of impermanence, that everything comes to an end. Don’t be uptight about it. There is nothing we can do to prevent it, so relax. Which is very true. Not so easy to apply, but true.
That’s the whole point of meditating on these things. It’s to familiarize ourselves with them in a controlled situation and to try to see relationships and so on in terms of “it will end.” I always use the example of a beautiful wild bird that comes to the window. I can enjoy the presence of the bird, let’s say at the feeder at my window, but the bird is going to fly away. If it comes back, well, then I am very fortunate. But if I try to catch the bird and put it in a cage, it will be very, very unhappy and might even die. The people who are in our lives – especially children, family – come in and go out like the wild bird. So, enjoy the beauty of the time that we have together without clinging and trying to put them in a cage and by keeping in mind that, at any time, they could fly off. And they will fly off – even if it’s in terms of death. They might stay with us for as long as they are alive… or we are alive. We might die first.
These are helpful images. In meditation, one familiarizes oneself by going over these things again and again, trying to see the relationship and the other person in these terms. That doesn’t mean being paranoid that it’s going to break up, thinking that we can’t live without it and so on. It just means learning to accept the reality. I think this is the main thing. This is what Buddhism is all about: seeing reality. As Shantideva said, if there is something we can do about a situation – without thinking that we’re in control and that what we do is going to change everything in the universe – don’t worry about it, just do it. And if there’s nothing we can do, why worry? Worrying isn’t going to change anything.
Participant: What I don’t really see is relaxing and not continuing to cling. To “relax” could mean just to let things go on as usual.
Dr. Berzin: Right. “Relax” could be understood in a wrong way not only to mean not being uptight but also continuing to cling and letting things go on as usual – for example, when we are in an unhealthy relationship. It becomes very complex; there are many variables and variants here. If we’re in an unhealthy relationship and projecting that “I need this relationship; I can’t live without it. I’ll become a nothing if it ends. If it does end, it’ll be all my fault. So, I better shut up anyway and not cause it to end,” just relaxing and putting up with bad behavior is certainly not the solution either. So, everything is within a context.
Participant: I think it’s also important to see on what level one’s practice is. So, for instance, on an ordinary level, my relationships, say, to my friends, do give me some joy, comfort and so on, and they are, on that relative level, very important. The illusion is that I wouldn’t be able to live without my friends. That’s the illusion. But on a more spiritually advanced level, I might see that if one of them were to die, that friend’s death would not be much different from him or her going off for a weekend. But I shouldn’t mix up the levels.
Dr. Berzin: We can enjoy our relationships with our friends. This is definitely the case on all levels. We are not saying not to enjoy our relationships. We enjoy them for what they are. That’s one level of equanimity that as ordinary practitioners, we might be able to achieve. But achieving a level of complete equanimity, thinking that whether my friend dies or the fly dies or whether my friend dies or goes away for a weekend is the same, is much more advanced.
Equanimity is a very, very difficult thing to have. Having an equal attitude toward everybody? That’s really, really difficult. Having equanimity toward the so-called worldly feelings, the worldly dharmas – things going well, things not going well, etc. – means not being overly excited by one and depressed by the other. We just accept the reality of whatever it is when it happens and see it as an illusion, like an illusion, like a dream… “the death of my child in a dream.” Togmey Zangpo uses that image in Thirty-Seven Bodhisattva Practices. Very interesting.
Anyway, let’s have a final minute of thinking about the suffering of being parted from what we like. It’s a very deep topic actually. Why do we suffer when parted from what we like? And are we afraid of being parted from what we like?
[meditation]
We can see that the causes for this suffering are the attachment and ignorance, or unawareness, with which we grasp at the “me” as existing in impossible ways, thinking, “I can’t live without what I like” and so on. That’s why the intermediate scope is going to focus on getting rid of the disturbing emotions and this ignorance, or confusion. That is what this is all leading up to.
On another level, this suffering ties in with one of the general sufferings of samsara: the suffering of having to leave this life, this body, all our friends, everything that we’ve had in this lifetime. Then there’s the suffering of having to go on to something new, a new rebirth, which is something that we don’t really have control over. We don’t know what will be. Chances are that we won’t be with the friends and people we’ve liked. So, that suffering of being parted from what we like, even if we are dying in terrible pain, is usually accompanied by some clinging. We want to be free of the pain, but we don’t want to be free of our loved ones.