Cutting to the Chase

So what is practice? As Lama Zopa says, the workshop is in the mind – that's where practice is. The meaning of the Tibetan word for meditation is gom – becoming familiar – and on the basis of becoming familiar with Buddha's psychological model of the mind, we become familiar with what's there. The Buddha is saying we have phenomenal potential, and it's innate in every living being. If we could get a taste for it, we would be inspired. It's an antidote to depression and hopelessness, which is so common in our culture.

But potential for what? Not something holy, like heaven in the sky or the next life, but potential for unbelievable bliss, for joy, for contentment, for clarity, for kindness, for compassion – for something we actually want. It is something so earthy, so tasty. Spirituality is experiencing the positive qualities we actually possess and developing them. It is also seeing the deluded, polluted parts of ourselves and reducing them. We need to become deeply familiar with all aspects of ourselves, and the only way we can do that is by looking inside.

It's not enough just to do our meditation and be "holy" – we have to analyze. Otherwise, it's as if someone were to present you with a delicious cake and you want to know how to make it. You can't be all airy-fairy, cross your fingers, put in 14 eggs and hope for the best. Excuse me, you have to have a precise recipe, right? Two eggs, three and a half cups of this, two spoons of that – you need to know the relationship between those boring ingredients and that delicious cake. It's exactly the same with our mind, with practice. This is why, especially in the Tibetan tradition, studying the psychology is seen as a profound way to transform our mind. It's learning the recipe so you can transmute the theories into practice. Don't underestimate using the conceptual mind – it's a powerful stepping-stone.

On the other hand, if you learn the recipes, pretend you know how to make a cake, but never make it, you can't call yourself a cook. That's the trouble with spiritual practice – we throw out the intellectual and become totally experiential, or we get caught up in the intellectual: we learn the recipe but we forget how to make the cake. We need both.

Ven. Robina Courtin is an Australian-born Tibetan Buddhist nun who is director of the Liberation Prison Project and has an intense program of world-wide teaching engagements. Cutting to the Chase is an abridged version of a teaching Ven. Robina gave at Kadampa Center, Raleigh, North Carolina in August 1997.

This article can be read in its entirety in Mandala