Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha - An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book

Another possible reason why people don’t learn to actually practice correctly is that many people are not on retreat or in the meditation class to learn what the teachers have to teach. This may be for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they are just there to find something else, such as time away from some situation, but are not there to find what the teachers are teaching. Some students may have so much invested in their level of education and high position that they just can’t hear what the teachers are talking about, or they hear it and think, “Oh, yes, I myself have read many books and fully understand that trivial little point about impermanence, but when do we get to enlightenment?” Yikes!

Some students may be there to further their psychotherapy, which can be a fine and worthy goal. However, they may assume that the meditation teacher is probably the best psychotherapist they could have.

They may think, “After all, they are enlightened, aren’t they? They must be completely sane and balanced. They must know about how to have the perfect relationship, how to find the prefect job, how to invest in the stock market, how to talk to their mother, how to end world hunger, how to rebuild a carburetor, and all other such details of wise living on this Earth. After all, isn’t enlightenment about understanding everything?” Gadzooks!

A quick digression here: enlightenment is about understanding the fundamental nature of all things, and what they happen to be is ultimately completely and utterly irrelevant to enlightenment. Thus, very enlightened beings understand something fundamental about whatever arises or however their lives manifest, i.e. its impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and emptiness, as well as all of the stuff about the True Self, which is the same thing and will be discussed later. However, they have no more knowledge about the specifics of the world, i.e.

content or subject matter, than they have acquired in just the way that anyone else acquires knowledge about the specifics of this world. They can even have all sorts of psychological baggage to deal with, and this is probably the norm.

Enlightened beings will know a lot about the territory of insight, having had to navigate it to get enlightened, but this is a strangely 104

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specialized skill and a fairly esoteric body of knowledge that is only really useful in helping others navigate it. True, being enlightened does provide by degrees deeper levels of extreme clarity into the workings of the mind, and this can be helpful. By understanding their own mind, they will have some level of insight into the basics of the minds of others.

However, unless the meditation teacher is a trained psychotherapist, they are not a psychotherapist and probably shouldn’t pretend to be one, though this unfortunately happens far too often in my humble opinion. Just so, a trained psychotherapist is not enlightened unless they get enlightened and shouldn’t pretend to understand insight practice if they don’t. This also happens far too often if you ask me, and the dark irony is that they tend to charge much more than real, qualified dharma teachers. (Note: the Buddha was quite adamant about no one charging for the teachings, which are considered priceless. This system of non-obligatory donation and mutual support has worked quite well for 2,500

years, and it would be a tragic mistake to assume that it cannot function in the West.)

Using retreats or meditation purely as a form of continuing

psychotherapy may have other problems associated with it. One may not be in the guidance of a trained therapist and may not be used to the mind noise amplification factor that silence and a lack of distractions tend to create in an absence of grounding the mind in a meditation object. Further, one may not gain the benefits of the only thing that does make a permanent difference in ending fundamental suffering and bringing the quiet joy of understanding: mastering insight practice and getting enlightened.

Another quick digression here: there is this odd idea that somehow a lack of effort is a good thing, or that it is bad to want to get enlightened. This is completely absurd and has paralyzed the practice of far too many. I believe this has come from an extremely confused misunderstanding of Zen or the Bodhisattva Vow. No one ever got enlightened without effort. This never happened and never will happen.

Anyone who has really gotten into Zen or Mahayana teachings will know firsthand that they both require a tremendous amount of effort just like every other spiritual path. As one of my teacher’s teachers put 105

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