Motivation and Practice

by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

I must say I feel somewhat intimidated to be speaking at a Zen centre, especially with a Roshi sitting right beside me! When I came here, I had no idea what I was going to speak about because I'm sure that most of you, certainly those of you who are studying under the Roshi, have no need to hear anything I have to say. But last night it came to me that what I wanted to talk about this morning was motivation — to get back to the deep roots of why we are here and why we are practising.

In the Mahayana tradition, there are considered to be three basic motivations for practising Dharma. The first one of these is the realisation that something in our life isn't quite the way we want it. There is always a fly in the ointment. Even people who have beautiful homes, loving relationships, children who fit in with their plans, a job they really love, in short everything seems perfect, still feel that there's something lacking in their lives. Most people have more tangible difficulties, and there are a lot of inner problems from early childhood or past lives which affect our ability to adapt to our circumstances. Whatever our situation, we just don't feel comfortable. So we look for a way to make life easier, to give it some meaning, to make it more bearable. Some of us come to the Dharma with the hope that practising its methods will somehow release the tension and make us feel better. We are looking for more inner calm and a bit more understanding. Basically, we are hoping that it will make samsara more comfortable. Like successful psychotherapy, it will enable us to adapt to our everyday life and relationships.

Some people come to the Dharma with the hope that it will make their lives more interesting and give them exciting experiences. This hope soon fades. Last night, we were discussing the effect that psychedelic drugs had in introducing people to the Buddhist path, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. Of course, the drug culture did open up people's minds to the fact that there is another reality. But as has also been pointed out, the problem with people who have had too much to do with psychedelic drugs is that they become conditioned to look for exciting experiences. Something always has to be happening. It's another kind of hedonistic attachment. It's considered a spiritual outlook by some people, but it's not really spiritual at all. If something exciting doesn't happen after a few days of sitting in zazen, these people are likely to give it all up as a waste of time.

The first level of genuine Dharma motivation comes through appreciating that there is suffering in the world and that merely creating pleasant external circumstances won't alleviate our inner hunger. This is considered to be the narrowest level of motivation that we can bring to our Dharma practice. After a while, we reach the point where we realise that no matter how peaceful we may be or how happy we may feel, our lives are very insecure. We never know what will happen. Today we are healthy, tomorrow we may be sick. Today the people we love and care about are with us, tomorrow they could be gone. Today we have nice secure jobs and nice houses. Tomorrow we might lose our jobs, then we can't pay the mortgage, and we're out on the streets. We come to realise that our situation is somewhat akin to living inside a large prison.

Once I had a dream about this. I dreamt that I was in this enormous prison with many, many different levels and many different apartments. Some of them were like penthouse suites: very luxurious quarters full of people enjoying themselves. There were other levels like dungeons where people were being tortured. But whether one was up high and living in luxury or down below and being tortured, it was still prison, and one never knew where one was going to be put next, because there was no real freedom. Now we're up, now we're down. We don't know. In this dream, I went around thinking, "We've got to get out of this prison. We must leave." I went to many people and said, "Look, this is terrible. We're all completely trapped here. We must get out." And some people said, "Well, it's true, it's prison. But it's quite nice, it's quite comfortable, it's all right here." And other people said, "Well, yes, we'd like to get out, but it's really very difficult. People don't ever get out." Although I spoke to many people, it was very difficult to find anyone motivated to leave. Eventually we come to realise that no matter where we go, no matter what situation we are in, we are always insecure. We never know what will happen, not just in this lifetime, but in future lifetimes. This lifetime is so short. What about all those future lifetimes? Where are we going?

Then we develop the second motivation, which is to get out of samsara once and for all, to really make the effort to go beyond samsara into nirvana. From this point of view, nirvana is the final refuge. We don't have to come back, ever. We can stay in whatever state nirvana is. It's beyond thought, so by definition we can't think about it. But we can aspire to it, and we can realise it. Nirvana is something one can realise in this lifetime. Therefore, the second motivation which many people in the Buddhist world definitely have is to make a big effort to get out of samsara altogether. And this is a valid aspiration.

But then we come to the third motivation which faces the question of who is getting out. The fact is that we are not, as it may appear to us, autonomous globules. We cannot take one globule out and leave the others behind, because in fact we are all intensely, deeply interconnected. We are all part of a huge web. It's impossible to remove just one strand from a web without affecting the entire structure. The traditional example is that we are all caught in a huge, vast swamp. It is a thick, muddy, polluted swamp, and we're all drowning in it. We all want to get out onto firm, dry land. So we make enormous efforts and pull ourselves out. And there we are, a bit muddy, but nonetheless okay. Then what are we going to do? Are we going to turn around and say, "Sorry folks. I'm really sorry you're all drowning there in the swamp, but I'm out, so just keep going and maybe eventually you can get out, too," and then turn our back on them and leave? Could a mother or father leave their children drowning in a swamp and say, "Well, sorry kids but I got out"? Could you leave your parents, your husband, your wife, your brothers, your sisters, your dear friends behind and save only yourself? If you were in a burning house, would you run out and leave your children, parents, and everyone else inside? Some people race back in just to rescue their dog. Once we appreciate that all beings have been our children, our dear mothers and fathers, our friends, our husbands and wives in infinite lifetimes, there's no question of leaving them behind. This is the traditional way of seeing things. We are standing on the shore only because being there puts us in a position to pull others out. As long as we are still in the swamp, even though we long to help, we cannot. If we try to help others out, we will just sink deeper into the mire with them. If we want to benefit others effectively, we must first be standing on firm ground.

What is the meaning of bodhichitta? What is the significance of the Bodhisattva Vow? If we limit ourselves to saying, "I vow to save all sentient beings," that's very nice, but when and where and how? The point is that we have to ask ourselves, "Why are we practising?" Are we practising so that we can be happy, or free, or are we practising so that we can benefit others? This is not just an academic debate, because it is our true motivation for being on the spiritual path, rather than what we chant, that will colour everything that happens to us. It's like adding different coloured dyes to water. It's going to become red or blue or green, depending on the colour of the dye we add. In the same way, our true reasons for practising will colour the results of our practice.

It's not much use for us just to say, "Well, of course, I'm on the Mahayana path, so I'm a bodhisattva, and therefore I'm aiming to save all beings." We must examine our motivation for everything we do. Are we doing it for ourselves, or are we doing it for others? This is an essential point, because when we vow to save countless sentient beings, we must understand what this means. When the heart really comprehends this, something in the mind turns around and our attitude is completely transformed. And to the small extent that we worldlings are capable of, there is a deep inner change of direction. It's not something we can speak about, but we definitely know when it's there.

I don't think this true motivation is always there. In the beginning, as incipient bodhisattvas, we are not always truly altruistic. If we claimed to be, it would just be self-deception. But sometimes, even if only for a very short time, we understand what we're talking about. That is why bodhichitta is so infinitely great and so highly praised in the Mahayana sutras. It transforms even the smallest virtuous action into something of vast proportions, because we are not doing it any more for ourselves or just for the object, but for the whole world. Then even the most minute thing has infinite ramifications, not just in this lifetime, but throughout the vast stretch of future lifetimes. This is the birth of genuine spiritual altruism.

It is very easy to talk about benefiting all sentient beings throughout time and space, although in fact this is a unique aspiration. You see, in most religious traditions, including the most ascetic disciplines, even the most altruistic attitudes are cultivated in order to gain some kind of a reward later on, be it a place in heaven, paradise, nirvana, or a better rebirth. Even the greatest saints of certain religions are still aiming for heaven. They may live the most difficult and self-abnegating lives, but it's all because they think that this lifetime is relatively short. They live in anticipation of eternity in heaven, in glory. Now we're turning that concept right around and saying, "Forget the glory, forget heaven, forget paradise, forget nirvana, we don't have time for that. There are too many beings out there suffering endlessly in samsara. There is no end to their suffering." We can see just by looking around us that there is no end to the sufferings of samsara.

The United States is regarded as a model country for the rest of the world, and everyone is supposed to be aspiring to this lifestyle. But look how many problems everyone has! Look how much suffering there is in this "best of all possible worlds"! We definitely have to make ourselves capable of helping other beings. That is the only reward worth having. Nothing else matters. That is why in Buddhism when we do an especially virtuous deed, we dedicate the merit. We give everything away, all our realisations, all our happiness, all our virtue. We dedicate all the good things in our lives to others. When this attitude starts to grow in the heart, little sprouts of understanding begin to appear and transform everything.

In the Tibetan tradition there's a Dharma protector called Mahakala, whom some of you might know of. Once when it was time for me to do this practice, I thought to myself, "Oh no, I'm very tired, I won't do this." Then the thought came into my mind, "Who are you doing this practice for? You're not doing this for yourself. You're doing it as a substitute for all the beings in the world who don't know how to do it. So what if you feel tired?" It's not a matter of how we feel. We have a responsibility to do things not because we want to or because they will benefit us, but because many other people don't at this point know how to do these things. We must do them on their behalf. When we sit zazen, we're not just sitting for ourselves, we're sitting for all beings. All beings are sitting here with us. When this idea really penetrates our minds, it makes everything seem very light, even though it may sound like a heavy idea. At first we may think, "I am supposed to have responsibility for all sentient beings, yet I can't even take responsibility for myself." But then we realise that apart from the fact that all beings are interconnected, we are also interconnected with all the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. We are not alone in doing this. We are supported by all the Buddhas and bodhisattvas who are likewise here only to benefit other beings.

Do you understand this? We are not autonomous beings. We're not separate little bubbles. We are all interconnected. We are responsible for each other. In addition, we are all closely connected with the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. They're not creatures up in the sky somewhere, or some kind of oriental fantasy. The Buddhas and bodhisattvas are right here and now, right in front of us, right with us. If we open ourselves to their inspiration, they will support us. They are here and now because they are none other than the essential nature of the mind. And they are here to help us and support us because they are also working ceaselessly to benefit all sentient beings. Once we plug into all that energy, we no longer feel alone.

Sometimes when people sit on their cushions to meditate, they feel isolated. But they're not isolated. We all share this same air. We share this ground. We share food, water, everything. We are all sharing, and we are all interconnected, not just with ordinary sentient beings, but also with many, many layers of higher, evolved beings. They are all here to support us. So our motivation is not just for this hard little ego sitting here. It's very vast, very expansive, going through endless aeons of time. We have vowed to be with sentient beings for endless aeons, not just this lifetime, the next lifetime, and the one after that, but endlessly, infinitely. Not as "I." I mean, I, Tenzin Palmo, am not going to come back in the next life. Something else will be here, but this stream of consciousness and this energy force will be part of it. The other important aspect of motivation is that we should be conscious of it in everyday life. We should be conscious of the body, we should be conscious of what we do, how we speak, and what we think. We should always be aware of the underlying root of each action. In Buddhism, we talk a lot about awareness. We talk a lot about being mindful. One of the beautiful things about Zen practice is its emphasis on integrating mindfulness into everyday tasks. But it's not enough merely to be mindful. After all, one could be very mindful while robbing a bank! That is why we also need to be aware of our underlying motivation.

The Buddhadharma identifies three roots of evil and three roots of good. The three evil roots are greed, aversion, and the underlying cause of greed and aversion, our basic ignorance. Any action of body, speech, and mind performed under the influence of any of these emotions is unskillful. It doesn't matter if it looks nice on the surface or if it's not doing any harm. If the underlying intention is tainted with ignorance, aversion, anger, hatred, or greed and desire — and that encompasses a lot of what we do and think and say — then the action is basically unwholesome. On the other hand, any action motivated by the opposite of these three, such as non-ignorance, non-aversion, and non-greed, meaning discernment, love, kindness, generosity, and a sense of inner renunciation or detachment, will be wholesome. Not only will the results of these actions be good in the future, but performing them will also help purify our mind. They help transform the mind because they are in touch with our Buddha-nature. That's why they're so important. They're not arbitrary. It's not that 2,500 years ago the Buddha suddenly decided that aversion was a bad thing for Magadha, but maybe nowadays it's okay. These are eternal truths.

During the break just now, I was reading a book of essays by a feminist Buddhist author. There seem to be a lot of them around nowadays. I just opened it up arbitrarily, I wasn't reading through it consecutively. But what struck me most about it was the anger underlying the writing. In fact, one of the articles was a defence of anger. It maintained that women have a right to be angry, that they should be angry, and that it is incorrect to say that their anger is wrong. The article claimed that anger is a very clear and forceful emotion which can drive people to do great things and overcome many evils. What the author was really saying is that it is wrong to say that anger is a negative emotion, and to try to transform it into love would be counter-productive, especially for women. In this way of thinking, men shouldn't get angry because they are angry enough already, right? They're nasty, violent, horrible creatures. Only women have the right to be angry.

It struck me that if we act out of the root of anger, we will only experience more anger in return. The Buddha himself said, "Hatred doesn't cease by hatred. Hatred can only cease by love or by non-hatred." This is because if you're putting out anger, no matter how justified the cause, you will stir up the huge reservoir of anger in your antagonist, whoever it may be. So however justified it may seem at the time, all you'll get in return is more opposition. It's obvious. All anger, no matter how justified, how righteous, how holy it is, comes from the same source, which is antipathy, aversion, or hatred. Whether it expresses itself in violence or nonviolence, it's still anger, and so however "justified," it will never bring about circumstances leading to peace, love, and reconciliation. How can it? 

Many feminists are angry with men, whom they see as the big, bad, wicked oppressors. But if you go to the East where women are kept in a submissive state, you will see that when a woman gets married and goes to live with her husband's family, it is her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law she has to fear, not the men. So who are we going to blame for this? When I was living in Lahoul, the nuns there were in a very subordinate position indeed. But they were not just being kept down by the monks. The ones who really kept them down were other nuns. Who should be the focus of our anger? If we're angry with men and also with women, we're going to be angry with everybody, and then what? Who is the culprit? It's endless. We can always find some "justification" for our anger. The problem is not the object out there, although, of course, we should try to deal with that. The real problem is the anger which lurks within us, just waiting for an excuse to express itself. And since we're Buddhists, we want to find some nice justifiable focus for our anger so we can feel self-righteous and self-satisfied about expressing it! Of course there will always be something to act as an excuse. It's just samsara out there. But the real problem is our negativity, and this is what we have to deal with. The Buddha dealt with many wars, feuding tribes, and conflicts. He reconciled them and gave advice people could accept. But he did this from a totally wise and loving space. What I'm trying to say is that a negative emotion is always a negative emotion, no matter what justification we give to it. It is the emotion within ourselves that we need to examine.

Many people ask how to get rid of anger, because it is an uncomfortable fee lino. We don't like feeling angry. We don't like feeling hatred. But nobody has ever asked me, "How can I deal with my desire and my greed?" Yet greed and desire, along with ignorance, keep us trapped in samsara. But greed and desire are not really regarded as negative emotions in the West. After all, where would our consumer society be if we didn't have desire? On the whole, desire is regarded as a positive thing, especially if you can satisfy it. Desire is seen as a motivating force. It propels people to go out and buy more and more, and that keeps the economy churning. This is the idea behind all this.

In a Pali sutra the Buddha said that the karmic effects of hatred are eight times heavier than those of greed, but hatred is relatively easy to get rid of. Greed is less heavy karmically in that it may not directly cause harm to others, but it is extremely difficult to uproot because nobody sees greed as a problem. Within reasonable boundaries, we like being a little greedy. It's nice. We want nice clothes, nice food, a nice place to live. Our senses are stimulated. We have the idea that if we were not attached to all these things, we would somehow become cold, dried out and uninteresting people. So we are not highly motivated to relinquish our desire.

Khandro Rinpoche, a Tibetan Lama, once said that if you say certain words to Western audiences, they press everybody's buttons. She likes to say them and watch the reactions. One of these words is "surrender." Another is "renunciation." Everybody cringes when she says, "We need to renounce." And everybody says, "What do we need to renounce? What do I have to give up?" And yet renunciation is one of the main stages on the path. Renunciation doesn't necessarily mean giving up your home and family and going forth into homelessness like the Buddha did. Leaving home is not the only form of renunciation. I think in many ways, mental renunciation is much harder. It is not easy to give up cherished (though unhelpful) thought patterns and to be in the moment instead of getting caught up in our memories, anticipations, fantasies, and clever speculations. All of that is very difficult to renounce. Even if people appear to be living in great simplicity, and not many people are, they often still have a luxuriously furnished inner life. I speak from experience here. It is hard to cling to nothing at all. It is particularly hard to stop clinging to our image of who "I" am, to just let it all drop. We need to learn gradually how to do that. This is what zazen is all about. You sit nakedly. Your body is not moving. Your voice is not expressing. And the mind itself is letting go and just being present. Hopefully we are not elaborating on our fantasies. Hopefully we are sitting in a state of nakedness and absolute simplicity. 

That is the ultimate renunciation. We could be sitting thinking of the lovely things we did on our honeymoon or on a holiday, or we might be speculating on something that's going to happen next week or what we're having for lunch. We could be just sitting. Nobody will ever know. We're sitting here now, all looking like a bunch of little arhats. As long as the body and the speech are under control, nobody knows what the mind is doing, right? But to renounce the games of the mind and just sit in a state of openness and clarity is the greatest renunciation. The mind is extremely greedy. It's not just greedy for external pleasures, it's also greedy for mental comforts, which are much more difficult to renounce. But if we can manage to do that, we naturally enter a state of openness, simplicity, and clarity, and this leads to the birth of understanding. This is because we have finally dealt with the root of all negativity, which is our ignorance.

This type of existential ignorance cannot be removed only through learning. Of course, studying and thinking and trying to understand are good things, and they are particularly necessary for people like us from the West who don't have a background in Buddhist thought. Of course we need to read and understand what the Buddha was saying, because otherwise we will interpret it according to our own concepts, and change the teachings around to make them fit comfortably with our mental predispositions. It's very important for us to read, study, and understand, "What did the Buddha actually say? What was the Buddha's intention?" But that alone won't remove our unknowing, because our unknowing is not an intellectual thing. It's not on the level of our mind. It percolates through to our minds, of course, so our thought patterns are also ignorant. But the underlying cause is extremely deep, as you all know. Therefore reading, thinking, and discussing can help deal with the surface ignorance, but will not affect our underlying unknowing. This is why you are all sitting here. It's because you know that the only way to reach that very deep root of ignorance is through contacting the essential nature of the mind, through discovering who we really are. In other words, by uncovering our Buddha-nature.

Yesterday when I arrived, Roshi was talking about that huge oak tree out there, and he said he had been told that the roots go down as far as the trunk we see on top. I thought then, "This is really a metaphor for ignorance." We have this much on top. If we can cut down the tree at its root, there will be no more tree of ignorance. We Westerners study very hard. We seem to know a lot. Superficially, it looks as though the tree has disappeared. All that ignorance is gone. We can give all sorts of lectures, and we can get Ph.D.'s in Buddhist philosophy. But if that's all we do, the underlying roots will remain untouched. And from a Buddhist point of view, they will spring up again into a new tree, maybe with even more foliage because it's been pruned. What we really need is to get right down and pull up those incredibly deep roots of ignorance. The only way to do that is to have a decisive realisation of the nature of the mind. To have this experience once is not enough. It's only the beginning. My Lama always told me that once you realise the nature of the mind, that's the beginning of the path. Then you can start to meditate. Nowadays some people get some realisation of their true nature and think they're enlightened. They start writing books and setting up Dharma centres and so on, but that's really just the beginning. 

Until we are in contact with our true omniscient mind continually, moment to moment, without ceasing, twenty-four hours a day, we are not fully enlightened. That's why there are many bodhisattva levels. Our task is to deal with our ignorance. But in the meantime, moment to moment in our everyday life, it is very important for us not only to be aware, but to exercise discernment. We must know how to discern the true intention behind everything we do, say and think. When we recognise unwholesome things coming into the mind, we let them go. We recognise them, we accept them, we don't deny them. We don't get into conflict about them. We see them, we recognise them, and we let them go. We encourage and rejoice in wholesome things. In this way, step by step, we purify the mind.