Flexibility

by Ven. Thubten Gyatso

After 15 months in dreary Ulaan Baatar, memories of suburban Melbourne in Australia conjure up a paradise of immaculate houses surrounded by green lawns and a profusion of trees and flowers. I also remember that when I was a doctor making house-calls in that pure land, the beautiful exteriors of houses very often concealed interiors of great misery. Apart from the usual problems of sickness, old-age, and death, I encountered scenes of domestic violence and personal anguish so bad that it is painful to even think about them.

Even when not at war, no human society has ever attained peace because the components of society, the people, are always in conflict with one another. Even when we are alone it is rare for our mind to be at peace. Apart from sleep, and some fleeting moments after orgasm, our minds are usually whirlwinds of uncontrolled thoughts and emotions that are anything but peaceful. Euphemisms such as "free world" for countries not under the control of totalitarian regimes, and "peace keepers" for soldiers trained to kill, belie the reality of what is happening behind our own front doors.

Even though collective peace is impossible, all is not lost. The fleeting moments of peace we do experience indicate that, as individuals, our minds have the potential to be free from turmoil. The path of wisdom and compassion leading to the realisation of this potential is a personal path that winds through the minefield of relationships, families, and society. To avoid disaster, it is essential that we learn how to most skilfully communicate with each other.

A friend of mine has a problem in relating with her mother. In any one day she has to oscillate between the three personas of being her mother's daughter, employee, and best friend. I said to her, "Insight into this situation gives you an excellent opportunity to train in the best method for living happily. Do not be too serious. Your purpose in life is to make others happy, so treat these situations as if you are acting on stage. Play the roles of daughter, employee, and best friend with all your heart whenever the script calls for it. Remember, there is no true you anyway - no person has any more concrete identity than a character in a play. Your craving to be recognised and treated as an individual in your own right is itself the foundation of all unhappiness, and it is based on an illusion."

You, my reader, may object: "Wait a minute, tears and laughter in life are real, emotions on stage are pretended."

Well, I think the best actors and actresses identify with their character to the extent that their emotions on stage are real, even though they are reacting to pretended situations. Also, the situations in our lives that bring us to tears and laughter are not so real. Distorted by our prejudices, projections, and exaggerations, they contain a great deal of unreality. The admonition, "get real," usually given by teenage children to their parents, deserves deep consideration because the unhappiness of miscommunication, and that of feeling isolated from others, is usually due to our keeping a rigid self-image and an inflexible attitude about what we will and will not do.

There is nothing definite about our life other than the fact that, one day, we will die. When that happens, we will look back on our lives and realise how stupid we were to cause so much unhappiness to ourselves and others by being far too serious in a life which, as we are dying, will appear no more real than last night's dream. If we do not see this truth now, we will waste our lives absurdly posturing with pride and unnecessarily causing misery to ourselves and others by angrily and jealously defending our self-image, and feeding it with attachment and greed.

If we retain a fixed attitude of self-importance, the ever-changing and unexpected events of life will break us, like the wind snapping in half the strongest of trees, the oak. If, however, we are flexible, like the bamboo, even the most powerful wind will be unable to break us. My teacher, Lama Yeshe, was extremely skilful at communicating with others because he had no need to defend himself and no need to force his opinion upon others. At all times, he expressed interest in others, in their lives, their opinions, and their well-being. Nobody felt threatened or bored, he made every situation exciting, humorous, and an opportunity to open the eye of wisdom.

The secret path to happiness is to write our own script for life by treating our worst enemy - self-importance - as a joke. Whatever insult we receive, give it to self-importance. Whatever mistake we make, blame it on self-importance. In all situations, good and bad, we must be flexible and use them as opportunities to advance on the path and destroy the illusion of self - before it destroys us.

Gyatso

This teaching is by the Venerable Thubten Gyatso (previously Dr Adrian Feldmann), an Australian monk and old friend now working in Mongolia. One of the senior students of Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche (and also Geshe Roach) he is currently teaching at the FPMT centre in Ulaan Baatar. These teachings originally appeared in his local English language newspaper in Ulaan Baatar and arereproduced with his permission.

Thanks to Diane Olander (pelmo@got.net), these teachings first appeared on the Internet on the website (www.gepeling.org) of
The Jangchub Gepel Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies,
6960 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018, Tel: 01 (831) 335 1217
where you can find many more teachings and other interesting material.