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by Mark Schneider
Leigh Brasington, a cerebral computer programmer from San Francisco,
is bouncing around with me on a bumpy road, en route to a BC meditation
retreat. If there were ever an Olympic sport for meditating, Leigh
would have to be considered a gold medal contender. All he has to
do is sit quietly for a couple of minutes, focus his mind in a particular
way, and some kind of inner door opens up. From body-wracking rapture
to absolute emptiness, he’s figured out how to navigate the
more exotic realms of inner space.
"When I first discovered how to get ‘in’ there, I
was hooked,” he says with a soft, southern twang and a twinkle
in his eye. “For 18 months, I was in effect, a junkie, getting
high with meditation."
Brasington regularly travels to the University of Washington where
researchers have tried to discover what’s going on inside his
head.
They have attached electrodes to his skull, and then pondered the
strange scratches that emerge from the EEG. Something is going on,
but what? He now only allows himself to experience that sort of profound
joy for a few seconds, before moving on to the classical Buddhist
practice of mindfulness. “Wisdom is where it’s at,”
he says. Brasington now spends considerable time away from his high
tech job, on the road, teaching meditation.
In the remarkable 2001 book, Why God Won’t Go Away, University
of Pennsylvania researchers Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’ Aquili
wired up experienced Buddhist meditators to the latest brain imaging
technology. They reported finding “solid evidence that the mystical
experiences of our subjects…were not the result of emotional
mistakes or simple wishful thinking, but were associated instead with
a series of observable neurological events…”
This exploration of inner space, the mystical experience, they wrote,
is “biologically, observably, and scientifically real.”
And all that’s required to step into the vastness of the human
mind is a quiet room, a good guide, and an open heart.
It would be hard to find a better guide than Sakyong Jamgön Mipham
Rinpoche, a 41-year-old Tibetan meditation master and spiritual director
of Shambhala International. (Sakyong is a traditional Tibetan title
meaning Earth protector.) On May 7, the Rinpoche will speak at Vancouver’s
Chan Centre about his new book, Turning the Mind Into an Ally. He
exudes an extraordinary physical presence, which is hard to describe.
Maybe it is the many years of intense meditation practice. It could
also be the way he moves with a cougar-like gracefulness that belies
his muscular frame. This lama is a superb athlete, a serious marathoner,
an expert horse rider, and a weight lifter with a linebacker’s
biceps. Not your average, cave-dwelling yogi. Born in India, he grew
up as the son of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, one of the first Tibetan
lamas to bring Buddhism to the west, and the man who created Shambhala
International.
It is an enormous enterprise publishing the glossy Shambhala Sun magazine,
operating Naropa University in Colorado, and coordinating the activities
of 150 centres in 20 countries. One of its teachers, Pema Chodron,
has become a world-famous author in her own right.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche has crystallized all this effort into one
simple question: “We all agree that training the body through
exercise, diet and relaxation is a good idea, but why don’t
we think about training our mind?”
For Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, training the mind - and the beginning
of the inner journey - starts with listening to one’s mind-chatter.
“You can be sitting on the bus, worrying about something and
have no idea life doesn’t have to be this way,” the ruggedly
handsome Rinpoche told me. “Your mind is running you. It’s
like a wild horse. All it’s trying to do is to be happy. It’s
trying to ease its own pain, but it can’t do that because,”
and here he takes in a big lungful of breath, “it lacks wisdom.”
And there it is, the “wisdom thing.” The Sakyong, along
with Buddhist teachers for the last 2,500 years, have all proclaimed
the same message: If we’re embarking on this journey we’d
better have a clear idea of what is real, and not just rely on the
contents of our thought-filled minds. Unfortunately that’s easier
said than done.
According to the Sakyong, the mind is continually seeking to avoid
pain and plotting strategies for happiness. But what we soon discover
through meditation, once we clue into the mind-chatter, is a fundamental
paradox we somehow have overlooked. “On the one hand, we find
doubt and cynicism,” he explained. “But there is also
materialism” - the hopeful, non-cynical belief that external
things are the solution - “and we also find pride and insecurity.
So we are in a deeply confused state because all this is happening
simultaneously.” His image of the wild horse begins to make
a lot of sense. Cynicism living cheek-to-jowl with hope. Pride and
insecurity in a marriage of inconvenience. In love with the notion
that the grass is greener elsewhere, our mind gallops madly off, convinced
we don’t really deserve to find any.
In his view, when we meditate we become involved directly in the causal
chain of our being. It is more than just sitting on the cushion. Like
the law of gravity or Einstein’s theory of relativity, karma
gives shape to absolute reality. “When we meditate, it affects
our mind which is creating our karma, which in turn is effecting how
we perceive the physical world, and of course, that affects our health,”
he says. “Karma connects the absolute to the relative,”
he points out, with the assurance of a natural-born philosopher. “That’s
the law.”
Ah yes. Just what the University of Pennsylvania researchers came
up with by studying meditators, and finding “a neurological
process…that connects us with a deeper, more spiritual part
of ourselves…an absolute, universal reality that connects us
to all that is.”
For Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the purpose of meditation is not about
trying to get into some kind of higher level or higher state of mind.
The goal is to discover our essential nature, which he calls basic,
or natural goodness.
There’s a growing sense that we have come to the point where
we realize that materialism has taken us about as far as it can. Sociologists
call this “hedonic slippage”: the fruits of affluence
become less satisfying the more we have. A recent UK study showed
that in terms of “life satisfaction,” the people of Ghana
were about as happy as those in North America, despite wild differences
in income.
But truth be told, it must be acknowledged that materialism has taken
us on a wild, interesting karmic ride. It has made us hungry for happiness,
and now that we’re seeing how empty its promises have been,
we are ready for true nourishment. Materialism has taken us to this
moment of truth. “This yearning is becoming more apparent,”
he says. “The purpose of life is not just to survive the day,
but for life to have meaning. This is what people want.” And
yet we live in a culture that actively promotes Darwinian survivalism.
All of us trapped in our own scheming minds, worried sick about our
individual futures; and yet he believes that our culture is naturally
gravitating toward an exploration of inner space out of a sense of
necessity. “We are entering a period where people are beginning
to feel like they have to do this. We all see where aggression is
leading us. So this is an essential time…”
And this is where an exploration of inner space leads us. Learning
to be kind to our own wildness, to be kind to others. There can be
no greater adventure. “It’s becoming more apparent that
mindfulness is the final frontier,” Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
claims. “But the fact is it’s been there the whole time.
It’s like discovering your own back yard and realizing it’s
not a bad place.”
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche gives a public talk on Turning the
Mind Into an Ally, Friday, May 7, Chan Centre for the Performing
Arts. Tickets available at Ticketmaster, www.ticketmaster.ca, Banyen
Books, and at the Chan box office. www.shambhala.org
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