Queen Lolo
June 05, 2005
“Lojong” is a Tibetan Buddhist mind-training practice that uses 59 slogans to help us wake up and open our hearts. I’ve been working with the teachings, and reading Pema Chodron’s book, “Start Where You Are” which focuses on each slogan and offers practice insights on how to apply them to daily modern life.
The slogans include, “Always maintain a joyful mind,” and “Don’t expect applause,” and “Change your attitude, but remain natural.”
Last night I read the chapter on “Be Grateful To Everyone.” Pema talks about how we usually want to avoid situations and people who drive us crazy – when, in fact, these are precisely what we need to wake up and grow.
“When you’ve met your match, you’ve found a teacher,” she writes.
Pema shares a story about the Indian Buddhist teacher, Atisha, who went to Tibet. He was worried about his “blind spots” -- those places in us all that we hide from ourselves and others. He wanted to make sure he’d continue waking up and working on himself. He was told that the people of Tibet were good-natured and kind, and was concerned they wouldn’t be irritating enough to push his buttons. So he brought along a mean-tempered Bengali tea boy to drive him crazy. (The comical ending to the story is that when he got to Tibet, he realized he didn’t need the tea boy after all, because the Tibetans weren’t as pleasant as he’d been told.)
Apparently Gurdjieff had his own version of the “tea boy” too. There was a very high-strung student in his community who drove all the other students insane. One day this guy freaked out and ran away. The others were thrilled! But Gurdjieff was upset, and went after him in his car. When an assistant asked Gurdjieff why he cared about this annoying student, Gurdjieff confided a secret. "You're not going to believe this... and you must tell no one. I PAY HIM to stay here!"
Pema told this story at a mediation center that later sent her a letter.“We used to have two people here helping and there was a lot of harmony. Now we have four and the trouble is beginning. So every day we ask each other,
“Is somebody paying you to be here?”
I know we all have people, organizations, and life situations that serve as our “tea boys.” No one has to pay to be exposed daily to irritations. We don’t have to look any further than our own families, friends, neighbors, or freeways. No matter how hard we try to surround ourselves by loving, supportive influences, we still get hit in the face every single day by a multitude of things we’d rather avoid. It's just part of the human drama.
So what’s the solution? “Be grateful to everyone” means viewing it all as grist for the mill. “Other people trigger the karma that we haven’t worked out,” Pema says. “They mirror us and give us the chance to befriend all of that ancient stuff that we carry around like a backpack full of granite boulders.”
Far from wishy-washy, “Be grateful to everyone” requires fierce willpower and focus. It’s much easier to jump into defensiveness, hide under the covers, or plot a juicy revenge. It’s simpler to pour a glass of wine, turn on the radio, and put that cranky tea boy right out of your mind. Afterall, he’s the one with the problem, right?
Well, Pema says, “Do you want to always be right? Or do you want to WAKE UP?”