From The Under 35 Project: “Getting in touch with unconditional love”

Here's the latest from The Under 35 Project, by Robert de Boer.

Why do I practice the teachings of the Buddha? Frankly speaking, I don't feel like I have much of a choice. I want to be happy, live a meaningful life and be of as much service to others as I possibly can. Couple this basic life aspiration with the circumstance of meeting a great spiritual path, in my case Tibetan Buddhism, and an authentic master and it's kind of a done deal.

For me, the spiritual path is not a luxury or a hobby, but a basic necessity for living a good life. Since late puberty I've had the sneaking suspicion that most of the suffering in my life was due to my own mind. If I want to be happy, there is no other way than working to transform my mind and heart.

Because the fact is although I greatly admire compassion and all of that, most of the time I'm too scared of suffering to really sacrifice anything. When I dare to look deeply at my motivation for most of the things I do in life, it always boils down to "me, me, me." There is so much personal baggage obstructing the genuine aspiration to progress on the spiritual path and serve others.

Speaking of personal baggage, I thought I might display some of mine and my adventures with trying to let it go… I would say that one of the heaviest pieces of baggage I've been carrying around all over the place is the basic assumption that I'm not good enough. Time and again I've noticed myself taking up a particular spiritual practice or setting a goal in self-improvement with the hidden condition "When I achieve that, then I'll be good enough." So many times I've fallen for that one! Even feeling "When I manage to fix this stupid 'I'm not good enough' then I'll finally accept myself as I am!"

Although insight is crucial, it unfortunately doesn't instantly dissolve this kind of habit of thinking ingrained over many years. On the Vajrayana (Tibetan Buddhist) path, confident trust in your own fundamental goodness is crucial and the very foundation of the path. Having received so many teachings on this subject, it's amazing to see how this neurotic core assumption about myself has managed to survive almost unperturbed.

In this respect I would like to share how difficult it is to really let the spiritual teachings touch these kind of most fundamental aspects of the mind and heart. The most gross level of resistance has been pride and critical judgments along the lines of "This kind of stuff is so beginners' level; I should be doing advanced compassion practices for the benefit of all sentient beings!"

I've had periods when I was so angry with myself and beating myself up about not living up to my overly ambitious meditation schedule. But then I started to reflect on the negative qualities of anger and really examining if beating myself up was actually helping me to shape up or it was only making me feel shitty. This way I developed the confidence that there was nothing good about beating myself up and I should kick the habit. Then whenever those kind of feelings came up, I regarded them as a fish seeing a fisherman's hook and tried not to bite. Gradually these kind of moods become less and less frequent.

Having signed a treaty of emotional nonviolence with myself, the next thing in store for me was disappointment. If I can't beat myself up anymore, at least I can still feel so bad about myself it just makes me want to give up altogether. My teacher has said that feeling like the worst spiritual practitioner in the world is just a cop-out, so you can give up and comfortably stay stuck in your habits. This, of course, was first used as ammunition for my self-criticism, but now I can appreciate the wisdom of it and it encourages me to keep trying to progress on the path.

It has taken me years to find the courage to accept where I am on the path and what my weak points are. It's so alluring to just spend time refining my strong points and ignore my weaknesses, especially because of my low self-esteem issue.

Intellectually I believe that all beings have Buddha nature but in terms of myself, the belief that I'm not good enough has more emotional power and has the upper hand, especially when I'm moody. I have developed a lot of faith in fundamental goodness as displayed by the great masters and a lot of respect, gratitude and love for my own spiritual teacher. But this has not translated all that much into having trust in my own fundamental goodness and love and appreciation for myself.

Occasionally I muster the courage to practice putting myself in others shoes or imagine taking upon the suffering of others and giving them my happiness. But when I do, it confronts me with my usual self-centeredness and this has usually been so painful for my self-esteem (wanting to be a good Buddhist), that for several months I would be too scared to try it again.

I'm going into all this detail because having it clearly in mind is like making a diagnosis, and it strengthens the resolve to apply the correct remedy. What I've found the most useful for healing this part of me is the practice of loving-kindness. Especially directing loving-kindness towards myself. It is a practice of goodwill and kind attitude, supported by repeating wishes like "May I be happy, May I be well." In addition to these traditional phrases I've come up with some that are more powerful for me, like "May my heart be filled with love," "May I enjoy the complete benefit of the spiritual path."

Trying to argue with my core belief, giving reasons that I am actually already good enough has not helped as much as this loving-kindness practice, because this works on the emotional level. Loving-kindness practice brings a sense of appreciation and love for myself and on that basis, having trust in my fundamental goodness is so much more natural. Through this practice, the trust in fundamental goodness can develop the emotional upper hand.

As a Vajrayana practitioner I have a mala to count mantras. But instead, lately I've been using it to count positive thoughts. I try do one round on my mala, a hundred positive thoughts of kindness and appreciation towards myself everyday. When I feel inspired, I do another round for the people around me and the whole world.

When I give myself love like this, it heals the lack of love and instead of needing more from outside (like from my girlfriend or my spiritual teacher), I have some left over to share! Through loving myself, there's more space in my heart for others. This is a crucial point to reflect on because even now, I still have a nagging feeling that spending time to do loving-kindness for myself is a selfish indulgence. But the wonderful thing about loving-kindness practice is that when such judgments come up, you can just hold them with understanding and love!

Practicing loving-kindness for oneself is not something that is given much attention in the traditional Tibetan Buddhist teachings. The loving-kindness is immediately directed to a gradually widening circle of others. This has made it hard for me to acknowledge that I need to do it for myself first. But the fact is that not loving ourselves and low self-esteem are the kind of cultural neurosis that we have in the West, probably more than in the East. So whether we like it or not, we have to deal with it.

Fortunately there are many modern Buddhist masters teaching in the West that realize this. In this respect I would like to offer my heartfelt gratitude especially to Sogyal Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche and Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.

For the purpose of this article I've been reflecting on what I've experienced and learned that could be of benefit to share with you. But what actually happened is that this article has become a great reminder for myself and motivation to continue the process of getting in touch with unconditional love and fundamental goodness.

Finally, to support my main point of learning to accept and love yourself, I would like to conclude with the words of the Buddha: "One who truly loves him or herself, will never harm another."

Robert DeBoer is 29 years old and has been studying and practicing Tibetan Buddhism under the guidance of Sogyal Rinpoche for about 9 years now. He studied Clinical Psychology in Amsterdam and currently lives in a Buddhist center in Berlin.

To see the rest of our Under 35 Project posts, click here. And to learn how you can get involved, visit the project's website. Next month's theme is being alone and being together.

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