To help oneself – or others? That is the question

… just like a tree that has to stick around in one spot to grow tall and strong, we too need to stay with one tradition long enough to absorb, digest, and convey its beneficial nutrients …

“Truth is experienced from moment to moment, in the web of relationships…Do you realise, sir, that you are the world and the world is you?” – J. Krishnamurti

“The faults of being with people are really limitless. There are far too many useless distractions and activities…Make a definite effort from today onwards to live in quiet solitude in order to practice the pure dharma.” – Longchen Rabjampa

Since my father moved to Goa seven years ago at the ripe old age of seventy-nine, I’ve been reaping several benefits during my regular visits, including an inkling of what the above quotations are talking about. But we’ll come to that in due course. There’s a lot of chafing despair around – surprise, surprise – in this apparent oasis of leisure with its endless parties, drinking, seafood, and hedonistic beach-life. People are stressed out like anywhere else on the planet, complaining of long hours of work and the vegefying effects of modern entertainment technologies.
          
A good neighbor of dad’s runs an informal sort of Dharma center where I blah-blah most evenings, leading meditations and trying to initiate meaningful discussions. Some of the participants are quite confused and unfocused, since they are juggling several spiritual traditions, if not simultaneously, then in rapid succession. People are on the lookout for something to transform their unsatisfactory lives, but seem unaware of the fact that, just like a tree that has to stick around in one spot to grow tall and strong, we too need to stay with one tradition long enough to absorb, digest, and convey its beneficial nutrients throughout our deranged psychic systems. Otherwise, Dharma tends toward mental spectacle, show-biz almost, and the essential advice to practice the Dharma as a path to liberation gets pretty well totally ignored. We poor sentient beings of the degenerate era pursue incorrect or inferior paths, leading ourselves astray. We have gargantuan desires and cravings and are powerfully seduced by the concerns of worldly life. All this comes about, says Gyalwa Longchenpa, from not knowing how to practice the Dharma as a path.
       
Tell us something we haven’t heard before: This is old hat, I hear you say, gentle reader. Hold on a moment, say I; we’re building up slowly to the point, as well as I can manage in the sultry mid-day humidity I’m experiencing right now. Sometimes another angle on matters, another kind of voice can give us a clue. The great Sufi poet Rumi had this to say:

“If you want to discover eternal life and live in the radiant desert of Detachment, Advance bravely on the Path, fearing no pain or loss. Take each step authentically, risking your whole being.”

It’s getting clearer now. The deception can’t last. There are times when one has to stare one’s cowardice and fear in the face, as well as all the little bramble-like distractions that make the track so hard to find. I feel like Abushri, to whom Patrul Rinpoche addressed some rather sharp advice, who has been called a “miserable, daydreaming fool,” and who should “watch out for delusions in the present and not lead a hypocritical life.” But the bit that makes me seriously ashamed is where Patrul Rinpoche says that preaching without first-hand experience of the subject is like dancing on books, and that if one doesn’t practice what one preaches, one will be ashamed of it sooner or later. At the end of the advice, Abushri is encouraged to give up everything, that being the whole point, but also not to get angry with oneself for not being able to practice the Dharma…

Ven. Kabir Saxena (Losang Tenpa) works for Maitreya Project School in India.

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