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eat. Maybe you have a chocolate craving, and you decide to go out and
get an extraordinary triple fudge Swiss chocolate cake, or whatever it is,
and you fantasize and you imagine, and finally you get to that place that
specializes in catering to people just like you. They know you re coming
and they put all the extras on, and there it is. Instead of just going for
the cake, this time you re going to watch. You feel the desire in the body,
you watch the salivation in the mouth, you imagine the pictures and the
satisfaction. You really let yourself look at it and you feel it. It s tense.
In that very craving, there s a certain amount of tension and pain. That s
alright, you re going to get it satisfied. You get in your car, you go to the
ultimate bakery and you get that thing. You don t even take it to your car.
You sit down at the table, you take your first bite, and then all of a sudden
there s this whole shift that happens in your body. From this place of ten-
sion, it all just softens and relaxes. That chocolate touches your tongue
and it melts some in your mouth, it tastes delicious, it s really good. At
that point, it almost doesn t matter whether you have any more than that.
That s probably just about enough. If you watch, the desire moves at that
moment and the desire ends. Why is that? Anybody have an answer?
Because the great happiness of it is not just the pleasure, although there s
pleasure and that comes from sense delight, a certain happiness, but the
great happiness comes because the desire ends.
If you want to learn something really powerful about the mind
132 Chapter 9. Hinderances of the Householder
or about particular energies that are arising in your life, whether it s in
relation to food, people, love, work, look at it and discover what happens
at the moment in your mind when that anger, that confusion, that doubt
at a certain moment ends  it is a very, very interesting place to study.
There is where you learn a lot about its nature.
It doesn t happen easily. Whatever this is, it requires practice. How
many times have these states arisen in our lives? Countless,unbelievable
number of times. So you practice. Maybe you start with little ones.
Remember that quote of William Blake?
If one is to do good,
it must be done in the minute particulars.
General good is the plea of the hypocrite,
the scoundrel and the flatterer.
To do anything well, it has to be done here immediately, in this mo-
ment, rather than with some ideal   I ll get rid of this, or  I ll change
the world. How do we actually relate to our family, to the people near-
est to us, to our coworkers, to the people that we encounter in the day,
or to the immediate circumstances of our life? I regret to say this about
Mr. Blake, but I also have a quote from Catherine, his wife, who was
asked about William, particularly about the quality of his company.
She replied:
I regret to say I have very little of Mr. Blake s company. He s
always busy in paradise
Some person who I know whom I will not name said:
If you really want to know about a master, a Zen master or
otherwise, talk to their spouse.
Actually, this was a woman. She said,  Talk to their wife, but there
are a number of female Zen masters. That s really where you learn about
yourself, and that s also where you learn about what it means to be free.
It s not in the theory but in the nitty-gritty,in the little things. In traffic,as
I said,when somebody cuts you off or does some idiotic thing which only
a human being could do, and they do it, that s the place that you learn.
You have that argument with your lover or your husband. Maybe you
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come home and you know you want to argue. Have you ever seen that
one? If you look at it, there is a desire to make contact, but not too close.
It s sort of a safe way to make a connection and still keep some distance at
the same time, or maybe to discharge something because you re grumpy
at someone else, or some other reason. These are very interesting places
to learn about our minds, to learn about how things operate.
The desire to be right, you might just listen for that voice. I don t
know if any of you have that. I just love to be right, it feels so good to
be right. Do you know what I mean? You notice that voice that comes,
and you feel its quality, what s it like in the body, what does it do in that
moment to the relationship, and what is the sense of self that is built
around that story that I m right and therefore somebody else is not. You
look at it.
This isn t anything new, is it? There s nothing new in tonight s talk.
It s really old stuff. Here it is again. It s the nature of mind, and we re
learning to relate to mind in a friendly, compassionate and wise way, not
to stomp it out or get rid of it. You need it for certain things,like planning
a few things here and there, writing once in awhile. It has its place.
What is interesting is watching as you begin to allow yourself to
look at these energiesand not just act them out habitually. You might just
pick one for the next week or two. Pick one hindrance or difficulty in
your life and study it. Maybe we can have a little botany lab work here.
At the end of a couple of weeks we could have a meeting and we ll share.
We ll have a little time and people can share which particular hindrance
they picked and what they learned about it as they observed it.
As you look you also discover that each has a beautiful side. Isn t
that interesting, that each has some creative energy locked up in it? For
example, the Tibetans talk about those forces of greed, hatred and delu-
sion, in terms of Buddha families or types of personality energies  if
you will, archetypes. The padma energy, which is that of greed and se-
duction, when one learns to work with it and doesn t get quite so person-
ally caught up in it, turns instead to incredible creativity and a beautiful
sense of esthetics and beauty that s not oriented toward manipulation or
grasping but can be part of something creative and skillful. Or the vajra
type of mind which is in its negative or its difficult aspect portrayed as
cold, hard, judgmental, and seeing what s wrong with everything, when
one learns to work with that energy and open it and not be so afraid and
learns how to use it skillfully, it becomes transformed into what s called
 discriminating wisdom. Instead of being something that s undermin- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]