Читать книгу Fearless Simplicity - Drubwang Tsoknyi Rinpoche - Страница 14
ОглавлениеWell, here we all are in the Kathmandu Valley. There is pollution, life is difficult, and all our programs and plans are continually being interrupted. When people first fly in, they think, “What a pure land! I am arriving in a buddhafield! Whatever I planned I can 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 organs—all okay. But before, you did not seem to give much love and care to those parts. This is not the same as body-building or trying to be something other than what you actually are at this moment. Rather, it’s more the sense of appreciating the hard work that, say, your kidneys have been doing all this time: “Sitting in front of the computer, oh, you must be tired now. I will give you a little rest. You have been working very hard. I’ll let you relax a bit now.” Also—especially!—feel some empathy for this poor brain. We have been constricting it by concentrating so hard. Now let’s give it a break.
We can begin with ourselves in this practice, trying to relax enough to finally be at ease within ourselves. Then we extend this feeling to other sentient beings who are also troubled by various difficulties: “May they all be free of suffering.” We can gradually expand from there to cover greater and greater numbers of beings, until our compassion becomes infinite.
Because it is so important for practice to be based on a relaxed mind and a carefree, easygoing attitude, the Buddha began with the teaching of shamatha. The Buddha gave two types of teachings: one for the intellect, or the brain if you prefer, and the other for experiencing an aspect you can call the heart. Thus, we have heart teachings and brain teachings. As a matter of fact, the Tibetan word for compassion has the word “heart” in it; nying is heart, and the word nyingje is compassion. Je means “the most eminent.” The eminent heart is compassion.
People are often more interested in Buddhism’s brain teachings than its heart teachings. If you focus exclusively on brain teachings, however, you start to look like this. [Rinpoche hunches over, furrows his brow, and squints his eyes] You start off like that, and it only gets worse. You’re just about to break, just about to snap, because of trying to hold on to, catch, keep, and grasp more facts, more details, more concepts. Similarly, if you focus only on the heart teachings, it can be like this [in a singsong voice]: “Luuuuv, be kind. This feels so good. Aaaah, it’s so nice. La-la. Kiss-kiss …” That could also get a little weird.
The Buddha’s teachings actually aim for a balance between heart teachings and brain teachings. In fact, we need the brain teachings to improve the heart experience and vice versa. There needs to be some balanced connection between both the heart and brain.
So how about some teamwork between the two aspects of heart and brain? We can make a connection between the brain’s understanding of the teachings and the heart’s feelings, so that we understand both the reasons for compassionate kindness and the experience of its application. Combining heart and brain is actually the ideal solution.
Getting back to the original point—without calmness of mind, it is very hard to have a sense of delight. Without this sense of delight, there is no genuine compassion. If we are totally preoccupied with our own experience—how I feel, what my problem is, and so forth—there is no chance at all for us to care about how others feel. There is simply no room for compassion. Therefore the Buddha said, “First, train in shamatha.”
We may first want to study in order to get an idea of the Buddhist teachings. But in order to become real bodhisattvas, practically speaking, we must first calm down and then generate bodhichitta out of that. If you only want the idea of being a bodhisattva, rather than the actual experience, it is enough to merely think, “May I establish all beings in enlightenment,” and it is done. Chant it a few times in the morning. In fact, do not even bother thinking about what it means, just chant it.
Imagine that this mind of ours is like a big bank, and in our account we have invested many thoughts, concepts, and inclinations. Now we are earning interest on a daily basis, nonstop, in the form of further thoughts and concepts that arise incessantly. This bank account is high-yielding! Even when we try to relax, thoughts keep popping up about this and that. We don’t have to try to think of them—somehow they just come. They occupy us, and we give them time. Other times we get advertisements, or reminders that our credit limit is running out or our account is overdrawn. Something is always coming up, even when we sleep. Even while we’re dreaming, thoughts are coming up continuously. Right now, those of us who are middle-aged have already made substantial investments in this account. We’re drawing quite a bit of interest by now. We start earning major interest around the age of forty-five. Before that, we get a certain amount of interest, but mainly we’re busy investing and reinvesting. You understand?
Isn’t it true that the moment you lean back and relax, you naturally start to think of something? An object comes into your field of thought. Even if you don’t want to think, it happens. This is the interest from your previous investment coming into your mind. Even if we decide, “I don’t want that to happen! I’m closing this bank account!” it still happens. Thoughts continue to arise, because this is the natural course of things. We are totally and completely caught up in the cogs of this thinking machinery right now. If we want to stop this process, we must blow up the whole bank. There is no other way. Where exactly is this bank? It is located in a place called the alaya, the all-ground, and the name of the bank is concepts. Call it Conceptual First Bank. The interest that is paid out at such a generous rate is called thoughts and emotions.
What can we do about this situation? The bank is already there; we’ve already made considerable investments on which we are receiving enormous interest, and we don’t know how to blow up the bank. Most people just suffer through this situation, thinking each thought as it comes, feeling each emotion as it wells up. In practical terms, how do we deal with this? This is where Dharma practice comes in. It is another sort of investment. It begins with investing in shamatha, then vipashyana and bodhichitta, and continues with following the course of the spiritual path.
In our present situation a constant feedback of thoughts and emotions arises. We try to play deaf and dumb; we act as if it isn’t happening. We try to hide, but this doesn’t work. We need to try something else. In truth, we are not at the point where everything is spontaneously liberated. We have to start somewhere, and that starting point is shamatha. The first step in shamatha is to stay put: in other words, relax and stay present. In order for this mind, this attention, to stay put, shamatha has two methods: one with support and another without any support. People differ, though; some practice a lot of shamatha, some not so much. Please understand that the situation differs according to the individual.
If you want to know whether you need to practice shamatha, just take a look in the mirror one morning. If your eyes are staring into the distance, your forehead is wrinkled, your cheeks are drawn, and you look tense, nervous, and unsettled, then you can say, “Hmmm, this person needs a little settling down; she needs a little shamatha.” At this point, you don’t need to worry too much about what color lipstick to put on, about whether a little extra facial cream is necessary, or whether you need to shave. You’re looking for something else here. Rather than wondering, “Are my lips a bit dry?” instead you ask, “Are these eyes somewhat rigid? Do they look almost dry?” No water in the eyes, no moisturizer on the face—even if you put cream on, it still looks dry. If you feel your face is very far from being able to simply smile, and if smiling feels artificial, then try to say the words “content … relaxed … wonderful …” If it’s very difficult to say them and you feel, “That is definitely not my nature right now,” this is a clear sign that you need some shamatha. If you feel like you’re making fun of yourself, that the moment the smile is relaxed your face immediately hardens again into a humorless mask, well, maybe some shamatha is required.
We can notice this simply by being a little mindful. With a little presence of mind we can give this face a little daily checkup. We don’t have to wait through the hard-driving ages of our twenties, thirties, and forties and then wake up and say, “Wow, I’m forty-five—I need to go relax up in the mountains; I need to go somewhere else.” That is a bit late in the show. We do not have to wait that long. Could anybody reading this possibly be forty-five?
If we look absentminded but are completely occupied by thoughts and don’t even know it, then we definitely need some shamatha in the sense of relaxing. Whatever we are sitting and thinking about, obsessing about, just let it go and relax. There’s a definite need for shamatha here.
The basis for bodhichitta is relaxation. Without relaxing or settling down, there is no sense of ease. Without a sense of ease, there is no delight. Without delight, bodhichitta is not possible. Do you understand this?
As we get more relaxed, more free and easy, our minds become more malleable and it becomes possible to truly take in and understand the brain teachings of Buddhism. We better understand the wonderful qualities of bodhichitta and the benefits of giving rise to the bodhisattva spirit, as well as the harm of failing to do so. Through practice, these teachings can fuse with how we feel, with our actual experience. At this point, something can really happen.
There is a time in our practice and in our lives when we can put the teachings of bodhichitta to use for real. What Shantideva taught in The Way of the Bodhisattva and other teachings, what the Kadampa masters and others taught, can actually become something real in our own experience. Once we are at ease with ourselves, a certain delight and joy arises. At this point we have something to share. The tonglen practice of sending our well-being to others and taking their suffering upon ourselves can now be actualized, because we really do have some happiness to share. Before that, if we’re ill at ease and confused, what happiness is there to give to others? Really, there isn’t any—it’s just words. After engaging in shamatha practice, we can use the resulting sense of delight to make this wish: “May this delight be experienced by everyone; may everyone else have it too.” One can also pay attention to others and care for them with the thought “How horrible that they have to suffer like this! I wish they did not. May they be relieved of their pain; may I take all their suffering upon myself.” In this way, the tonglen practice of sending and taking can become a real practice—not an intellectual process but an actual experience.
Let’s do some shamatha practice to feel more at ease in our whole body. In your heart, leave room for love. Wherever you feel tension, loosen and release it, whether it is in a muscle, in your emotions, or in your thoughts. If your energy is up in your head too much, let it settle. If your love is a little tight, let it spread out a bit. Mentally let your mind smile, an inner smile that is not necessarily on your face. Let the juice of that feeling saturate you. Sit with your body straight—don’t slump like a sack. The shoulders are straight. There’s a certain sense of being grounded in your belly, with a centered area rising up through your body like a central channel. Your mind is not trying to make anything happen: simply be at peace.
If you want an object to hold in mind, notice the breath. It is good to keep the eyes open here. Open your eyes, open everything. It is all right. You do not have to completely sink into the feeling of being relaxed. You can be relaxed and yet alert. You notice everything—sounds, sights, how it feels. The “feeler” here is relaxed, and yet it feels.
When you notice that you are relaxed and at ease and that there is some sense of delight, slowly let this delight expand to embrace everything and everyone else—the whole world, including those people and circumstances you don’t particularly like. Include your friends, Mom and Dad, everyone. Feel very loose, like there is no tightness anywhere and you’re not mentally holding back anything.
When you feel some sense of delight and ease, some feeling of empathy, love, or bodhichitta, don’t cling to it. We need to be loving and yet not keep hold of that either. To think, “Wow! Now I’m doing well. Now bodhichitta is being born in me. Wow! I must be a bodhisattva now” is not productive. In fact, bodhichitta is diminished if we claim possession of it and try to own it. It is not something for us to own. It does not belong to us at all.
Whatever helps bodhichitta to arise is good. A frame of mind that is gentle and at peace is good. This is how it should be. A spiritual practitioner should become softer and softer from the inside. If we instead notice that our “practice” seems to be making us harder, that we are becoming tighter inside, then we should take a break. Take a holiday from Buddhism. Go to the beach in Thailand or Goa and sleep.
STUDENT: What is the point of shamatha?
RINPOCHE: As I explained earlier, this mind does not really know itself at all. When we are totally unaware of ourselves, completely preoccupied and busy with external matters, then shamatha has a point. The mind can get very busy, very caught up in its own affairs. It can feel like it cannot relax in itself for even one instant. The attention does not stay with anything in a sustained way, not with a simple cup, not even with a cup’s lid, much less you and your feelings! Mind does not even truly know what feelings and sensations are. This is where the training known as the fourfold application of mindfulness comes in: mindfulness of body, mindfulness of sensations, mindfulness of mind, and mindfulness of samadhi. This is a very good teaching.
Especially for people whose thoughts are in turmoil, who completely lose track of themselves. Maybe you forget about whether you have a leg or a heart or a lung, because you’re so busy looking in this one place: “Oh, maybe I have a neck.” But mostly it’s a very cold leg, a cold hand, a cold heart. You are completely out there, and it’s very scary—no trust. The fourfold application of mindfulness is the best way to connect with yourself. With this, you notice you do have legs, you have lips, feet, warmth: “Warmth, there is warmth around my heart. I love my heart. Oh, heart, relax.” This is the application of the mindfulness of body. “Oh, I love my neck pain. I know you need space. You want some space from me. I can give you a little space. I can give you my love. Relax.” Give it time—why not? Those parts are asking for space, for love from you, so you can provide that. Noticing different sensations and feelings—a dry sensation, an ugly sensation—allow the feelings and sensations to be felt and accommodated and settle down. Hug and kiss the feelings: “I am here for you.” No problem, really. You have squeezed yourself so much—like a toothpaste tube. Everyone has squeezed themselves so much, you squeeze and squeeze until very little comes out. You have become completely dry, and no juice comes out, no juice at all. Relax, breathe in. Relax the feelings and sensations. This is necessary in order to relax, to be aware of how we are.
Then there is mindfulness of mind. Realizing that mind is everywhere, we respond to it with warmth: “Oh, poor mind! I love you too. Don’t get jealous because I love feelings and body—I love you too. You also work so hard. I’m always squeezing my brain, my mind.” So give warmth to your mind, hug, kiss, relax your mind. Any thought that comes is okay. If anger comes, it’s okay. “Whether I am happy or angry, I welcome it into my mind.” Give space to anger. Don’t look at anger and think, “Oh, anger, you are so bad!” That means you are giving your anger a bad time and bad thoughts. Whether a good thought comes or a bad thought comes, just give room to any thought. Anything that comes in your mind, just make space, and mind settles down. Good thought, bad thought—you are aware of that. You treat them the same; give them equal rights. This tolerance toward all kinds of thoughts actually makes it easier for them to dissolve naturally later.
People who have low self-esteem and feel bad about themselves—if another person just praises them and comforts them a little bit, they really appreciate it and are helped by it. Their own thoughts have nagged them, saying, “You are bad, you are bad, you are bad.” So when someone comes along and says, “You are okay,” they really like it, and why not? Mind has “emotional rights.” Anything can come into the mind—happy, unhappy, good thought, bad thought. There is no law that says some thoughts should have restricted access while others should be allowed to move freely in and out of the mind. There is no such law! You can allow anything to come. But whether you cling to it or not is your right. The rights of the emotions are to come in as they please. Your right is to decide not to follow. So, you cannot disturb their business and say, “If you are emotional, then you cannot come in!” That thought should not happen here, because it will create problems. Mind is creative; anything can come to the mind. That is mind’s beauty. Whatever comes, comes. When it comes, your only responsibility is whether you cling to it or not, whether you go with it or not. You have a right in this regard. We need to learn that.
To learn how to allow thoughts to move freely while not clinging is the mindfulness of mind. In this way, we become skilled in dealing with thoughts. We become more aware, more present. A mindful presence develops so that we know what the body actually feels like, how the sensations truly are, how thoughts and feelings really are. Through training in this way, we become more and more mindful.
The fourth application is sometimes called the application of mindfulness of samadhi. This means that the awareness of everything else needs to be allowed to remain as it naturally is. It settles into itself. It is aware, undistracted. While being allowed to be that way, it notices the body, the sensations, and the mental activity. All of that is being hosted by the mindfulness of samadhi. We can call this mental stability. There is complete harmony between all the different events here, between body, sensations, and mental events. We are simply letting everything be, and as this awareness becomes increasingly settled, subtle, and refined, it can grow further. That is the point. If all goes well, then it can be rigpa—the possibility is there. For that to happen, however, the attachment or clinging to meditation must be relinquished. This is called “undistracted while not meditating.”
STUDENT: How do we not get carried away?
RINPOCHE: The main problem in most cases is not the lack of theory about how to do things, either on the material level or the mental level. Rather, it is that one forgets how to deal with a particular problem the moment it arises. Our sense of being mindful and alert is forgotten; it gets lost. Due to habit, we lose it; we somehow lose control. We are no longer in charge of the emotions in which we are involved, and at that point the real problem begins.
Centuries ago, many human problems had causes consisting in a lack of expertise—curing diseases, for example. There was not much education in human society, and not many proper laws. Also, there was not much understanding of human psychology. The situation now is different, of course. Our current problems are due to a scarcity of the ability to not be carried away by our own tendencies. It is almost involuntary. We almost seem to be enslaved by the habit of being carried away.
Actually, I think we have more problems than people did six hundred years ago, although our problems are not due to a lack of education. We are very well educated—you could say we are almost too well educated. We have the wrong way of being educated. It is an incomplete education, because there is no inner education.
This problem happens a lot. Circumstances arise, and somehow the intelligence seems to get switched off and one loses control of oneself. It is like being a smoker. You know smoking is no good for your health, but, being addicted, you just cannot give it up. If you didn’t know that smoking was bad for health, then it would be a different matter, but that is not the case. Nowadays you’re educated about the hazards of smoking—that all the black stuff goes into your lungs, that your teeth get yellow and your fingertips discolored, that you have bad breath all the time. When you try to kiss your girlfriend or boyfriend, they are disgusted. And if you don’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend, it makes it more difficult to get one. You know all this, and still you continue smoking many cigarettes.
It is precisely this addicted attitude that we deal with through meditation practice. Meditation practice is simply about how to release habitual attitudes; it’s not about anything else. And this is done through shamatha and vipashyana. Really, there is no other way to address this problem than by learning how to naturally release or liberate the addicted conceptual attitude.
Shamatha without support is a superb way to exactly identify my particular addiction. “What is it that carries my attention away repeatedly? When a certain thought or emotion comes, I am sucked into it right away. Now I notice, I see exactly what is going on.” That is the function or the effect of training in shamatha without support. And it is the vipashyana, free of concepts, that actually cures it, like taking the medicine that heals that problem. If you don’t know your particular health problem, it doesn’t help to take just any kind of medicine. Once you diagnose the disease, you can obtain the exact cure and be free of it.
If the problem is a mental addiction, then no material substance can really cure it. Likewise, nobody’s help from outside can “do it for you.” Rather, this addicted mental attitude needs to cure itself through knowing how. Certain physical substances can cure a material problem like a physical disorder. This is because material substance can influence material substance. But that which is immaterial or insubstantial—which mind surely is—cannot really be influenced by material substance. The mind needs to cure itself. This is a very important point. Through the practice of shamatha without support, we become aware of exactly what our problem is.
Imagine that a wild elephant is to be tamed by an elephant tamer, but the elephant tamer is also a little wild and also needs to be tamed. In fact, you need to be a little wild to even want to deal with a wild elephant, or you may get stepped on and squashed. But what happens if this wild, slightly too energetic elephant tamer gets into your home and starts to move things around? Maybe he’ll smash things; maybe he will rob you or beat you up. He needs some taming as well. Shamatha is the method of taming the conceptual mind; it is the elephant tamer. But who will tame the elephant tamer?
That method is called vipashyana, egoless vipashyana. Within the method of egoless vipashyana you find Mahamudra, you find Dzogchen, and you find the great Middle Way.
The wild elephant is our rampant emotions, our tendency to get attached, get angry, get closed-minded. The elephant tamer is our ability to be mindful and alert, to tell ourselves, “I’m not going to get involved in these strong emotions. I’m going to be quiet and calm; I will stay collected; I’m going to be mindful; I’m going to be alert. Now I’m quiet; now I’m peaceful; now I’m at ease.” That is the tamer.
But this tamer himself also needs to tamed. What can do that? The elephant tamer continues thinking in a dualistic way: “I must remain mindful; I shouldn’t be distracted. Who knows, maybe the elephant will get wild again. I’d better watch out. I must be mindful, I must be alert,” and so on. If this attentiveness of the elephant tamer is not allowed to be naturally liberated, dissolved, then one is still stuck in that dualistic way. The watcher has not dissolved. He is still watching.
