TANTRIC WISDOM FOR THE ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING

One of the positive benefits of daily meditation is the ever increasing ability to hear the "still small voice" that whispers to us, often not from the brain but from the pit of the stomach, and says "This is right. Do it." or "This is wrong. Halt. Do not proceed with your plan." Sometimes the "still small voice" is referred to as intuition. I think of it as the voice my guru, whose existence is inseparable from my own.

I moved to Anchorage, Alaska from New York six months ago in order to open a feminist oriented dharma center here. I found that there was more than a little interest for such a group in the Anchorage community. However, there was not enough immediate support for the opening a dharma center with a full schedule of classes. Such an undertaking requires time - time to get out and meet a lot of people, to speak to many community groups and local organizations, to make contacts with local people involved in education and the study of international cultures, and so on. Investing that amount of time without any immediate payoff also requires me to find gainful employment, since I am not a materially wealthy heiress.

What it all boils down to is patience. Ugh! Better to pack up my suitcases and leave town. Bring along the new little puppy I just adopted. Put her in the back of the car, with the nice warm knitted pink dress and little pink coat I just bought for her (after all, she's a girl; she needs more than one outfit to wear. What happens if the same dog asks her out on a date more than once, and she's only got the one pink dress? She would die of humiliation!) Throw my suitcases in the trunk and head south, to what Alaskans call "the lower 48." Travel across Canada in the middle of winter with a crying puppy who has not yet been toilet trained, through snow storms and over sheets of ice on winding mountain roads, and head to Colorado. When I told my friend about my plan, she remarked, "You've got some chutzpah!" In case you're not familiar with it, "chutzpah" is a Yiddish word meaning nerve or courage. There are two types of chutzpah: dumb chutzpah and intelligent chutzah. My friend did not specify which adjective she had in mind.

I went so far as to find a place to live in a beautiful mountain top home to be shared with one other like-minded, feminist woman and was all set to go, when something in my stomach said, "Stop. This is not right. This is a big mistake." I believed the still small voice whispering to me from the pit of my stomach, and settled back once again into my apartment and into building the new life and the new dharma center to which Anchorage will eventually give rise.

All of the ideas in my mind about why I should leave were the chatter of discursive mind. The term "discursive mind" is based upon the idea of discourse - the discursive mind engages in discourse. Sometimes the discourse sounds extremely logical and sensible, and it may in fact be logical and sensible. However, the truth of the matter is that we do not act based upon ideas which are logical and sensible. Our actions are based upon karma - moreover, our actions are the karma itself manifesting on the spot. Then we rationalize our behaviors with all kinds of logical reasons to explain why we did what we did, or why we are going to do what we are going to do. This rationalizing action of discursive mind is karma too.

The practice of meditation allows us to look at our minds and see the discursiveness for what it is. It teaches us, ever so slowly, not to take our discursive minds and the thoughts produced by them with such terribly dreadful earnestness all of the time. It teaches us to sit things out just a little bit -- allowing for what my guru, the Vidyadhara the Venerable Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, used to refer to as a "gap." It is within that gap that the still small voice whispers to us.

Many years ago, I remarked jokingly to a fellow dharma student that I thought I was born into this life in order to practice the paramita (transcendent virtue) of patience. We both laughed "Ha! Ha! Ha!" and "Ho! Ho! Ho!" The truth, however, was that it was no joke. I am confronted by the need to practice ever greater patience, time and again.

When I decided to remain in Anchorage, and add patience to the karmic stew of hard work and humor, my little puppy, whose name I then changed from Dr. Dawg to Sho Mo, was very happy. Then we were both very happy, and together we sang this dharma song:

Sho Mo: The guru has said "Come back" so we are going back, up and up. We're climbing the steps to the higher realms, going up and up."

Trungma, Rinpoche (picking up puppy and kissing her): "Sho Mo! What a joyful, good experience!" *

*Quoted from the "Song of the Three Brothers of Kham" in The Rain of Wisdom, also known as The Kagyu Gurtso, translated by the Nalanda Translation Committee under the direction of the Vidyadhara the Venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.