You never know what’s going to change your life or what state you’re going to be in. Then, when it happens, you’re not always sure anything significant occurred. Ninety percent of it is just showing up. I believe Gelek Rimpoche, my teacher, told this to us just a month ago, at our last retreat. Just give yourself a chance and just show up.
My journal entries for this day and the days immediately preceding it are so painful as to be almost unreadable. I was having terrible fights with my wife. “You’re so selfish, you’re so self-centered,” she yelled at me. “You think you’re so much greater than everybody. You’re just the same as everyone! You think your shit doesn’t stink!”
Two days later, on Sept. 24, I started out in this state:
“I want to hurt myself. I want to cause myself discomfort and pain. I want to work even though the weather has been so beautiful this fall. I want to work and grind and grind even though I hate it. I hate my job and yet I stay at it. I want to write and yet I refuse to. I work. Why am I killing myself slowly, strangling myself this way?”
I had seen a flyer posted on campus advertising a talk by this Tibetan guy. The title of the talk was “Overcoming Habitual Patterns.” This didn’t sound very mystical or airy-fairy. So I stayed after work and walked over to Ida Noyes Hall. I sat on a bench near the bank. It took me a while to realize that the little guy in the suit and short-brimmed hat was our speaker. I had expected him to be in robes or something. I think I wanted something totally different, something to take me out of the hell of my mind and everything I hated.
“Coming over here I realized how thoroughly I have turned my mind off and how I retreat into fantasy,” I wrote. “It really is a way of escaping the way things really are, of reality, really. I escape into dreams, and I think, over and over again, Wouldn’t that be nice, Wouldn’t that be nice, instead of thinking Isn’t this nice, Isn’t this good. Being happy with the way things are. It’s something I’m not used to.”
That’s the state of mind I was in when Brenda Rosen gave an introduction and Rimpoche began to talk.
“Little Tibetan monk in a brown business suit and a beige tie. How his earlobes were so long and stuck out like little baby’s thumbs. How his eyes were just like slits; round moons above and below. How he stood there gathering his thoughts with his eyelids closed and his eyes rolled up in his head like the Tibetan singers. How neat his hair was. The teacher gains respect. The only way to gain respect is by benefiting others. Then you gain respect without even trying. You acknowledge and face your problems. Then you use patience and compassion to overcome it. You do not ignore it. You allow your true beautiful nature to grow by eliminating barriers; then it grows of itself.”
And that is all I wrote. Nothing like “Wow!” or “This changes everything!” But my writing and thoughts after this after different. I started looking at things, simply looking, and finally getting out of my own head. And when Jewel Heart met the following week, I came. And I have never left.
