Hong’s Stories: Self Treatment
“The correct translation of Buddha’s famous saying “Life is suffering” is “Life is anxiety” Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche
Amituofu friends! I have suffered since childhood from what western medicine calls post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Basically, my self-defense mechanism is always on super-high alert and constantly over-triggers anxiety as a message to protect myself from perceived danger.
This mind state has profoundly impacted my friendships, family, education, and career. In 2013 for a second time, my life collapsed personally and financially because I had built a second home and marriage on the same rotten foundation called me.
At that time I was introduced to Buddhist nun Pema Chodron’s book “When Things Fall Apart”. The for-me-life-saving premise of the book is that anxiety we experience during times of crisis when handled skillfully provides a powerful vehicle for self-understanding and transformation.
In essence, Buddhism is an ancient system for addressing the human condition of “anxiety” in order to achieve psychological health for the individual, community, and world.
From the Buddhist perspective, our mind creates anxiety as a function of the mind/ego trying to control things to get what it wants, be it security, material wealth, love, revenge etc. But reality comes into conflict with our mind’s delusion and exposes its flaws. We experience this most acutely and overwhelmingly at times of crisis when the house of cards we have put together collapses.
Then we do the obvious and try to fix the situation to relieve our anxiety. The problem is that when we try to use our mind to fix the problem, we are depending on the same machine that created the problem. In fact, our mind has nothing of value to offer.
At this point trapped in our own delusion, the Buddhist solution is to do NOTHING. Instead, we stop, look and listen WITH GENEROUS KINDNESS TO SELF.
That generosity is key. The mind wants to beat us up for the mess we have created, but we cannot let that happen. We must insist on kindness to self no matter what the mind says. This will enable us to look without flinching at OUR PAINFUL MESS.
As we look eventually we begin to see things more clearly. At this point, obvious next steps and solutions arise FROM the situations themselves. We gain courage, face our fears and respond to positive and negative messages, and our life starts to uplift.
We call this uplifting energy that comes from living our life skillfully “chi”. This is not an “I love life and it will all be ok” approach, but instead a thorough, honest accounting of our life situations WITHOUT RECRIMINATION. That last bit is key and no small challenge given our cultural tendency toward punishment and conviction.
In my case, I have struggled with overwhelming guilt and self-hatred for putting my five children through years of family and financial crisis. My window to self-kindness was finally the knowledge that I grew up in the same broken environment. It was all I knew.
Pema is a disciple of Chogyam Trungpa, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master who came to the US in the early 70s after being forced out of Tibet during the Chinese invasion. He built a large following in the US teaching the Buddhist path through language and concepts designed to penetrate the western mind and condition.
Chogyam’s secular approach to Buddhism called Shambhala intentionally strips Buddhism of its traditional artifice which he felt distanced people from developing a contemporary practice. He, in turn, abandoned his traditional Buddhist robes and dressed in dapper western style so people could relate to him more directly.
A prolific author and speaker, Chogyam established a vibrant global community including Shambhala training centers (Shambhala Mountain Center) and the Naropa University (https://www.naropa.edu/) in Colorado. Crazy Wisdom (https://crazywisdomthemovie.com/) gives a pretty fair representation of his genius and the controversies that surrounded his personal life and some of his techniques to “wake people up”.
HONG’S SELF-TESTED PRESCRIPTION
To deal with acute anxiety episodes and PTSD listen to Pema Chodron’s soothing voice in hours-long talks on YouTube. Her content and delivery have helped me get to sleep many late nights through shattered nerves
Read Chogyam’s Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior (audio of first two chapters below). I literally read it every few months, twenty plus times so far. The book re-locates me on my path to psychological and spiritual health. As I build confidence, face my fears, and move down the path he so acutely describes, I experience the book from a new perspective, as if for the first time, and see more clearly where I have come from, where I am and get a glimpse of what lies ahead.
Read Chogyam’s other books too and watch his talks on YouTube, though NOT as a nerve calmer. He is a relentless trickster shaman who demands concentration and repeated reading/listening for the wisdom to soak in and take hold.
Continue to study our fears. Start out with lesser/lighter anxieties to build up technique and confidence — that is the kind way. As we build experience and confidence, we naturally start to take on bigger fears with gusto!
Find a living master to study under. Books and video are powerful but a real teacher provides guidance and support essential to skillfully training our minds, and heeling the “hungry ghosts” that generate our fears and anxieties. I study under living master Sifu Yan Ming Shi of USA Shaolin Temple
Amituofu! Amituofu! Amituofu!
I am beyond grateful for the shaman lineages that continue to survive and thrive sharing the wisdom of the ages. I will continue to train and sharpen my blade for what comes next.
More chi! Train harder!
Hong
