The skanda of feeling. The quality of intelligent expansiveness like tentacles or antennae.
By working with the buddha families, we discover that we already have certain qualities.
Our neuroses are the only potential we have.
The wisdom of equanimity
The klesha of pride
Energy of richness
Yellow, south, autumn, earth, solidity, fertility,
sense perception taste
Neurotic expression - pride, hunger, poverty mentality
Awake expression - Expansiveness
Karma - Enriching
Jewel
Notes from Liz’s talk:
Vajrayana coming into being around the 7th and 8th century
distorted / clarified
Wanted to start by talking about the lineage that these teachings come from…
Lineage is important in VY. Knowing where these teachings came from. Genuine and time tested.
Vajradhara, Tilo, Naro, Marpa, Mila, Gampopa
Trungpa, Rinpoche
Maitri space awareness
a way of connecting our everyday experience to sacred world
A Personal description of Ratna
There is nothing I like better than having ten bags of groceries on the kitchen table, and ten good friends coming over for dinner in two hours. I like the challenge, I like the test, I like the chaos. When people come early and want to help, I’m happy to include them, but I’m just as happy to do the planning, the shopping and the cooking all by myself.
When the food is on the table and people are tucking in, I feel tired, but I feel skilled, accomplished and appreciated. My people are taking my food into their bodies. It will be absorbed into their skin, muscles and bones. It will literally become them.
There are a few of my kids friends who have eaten over at our house so many times for so many years that I feel like a good chunk of their bodies is made of food I cooked.
A Clarified or Wisdom Ratna Experience
We have been talking about how each of these families, these aspects of our experience, have a wisdom side and a neurotic side.
That’s the wisdom of Ratna to me. It’s richness, generosity. It’s the harvest, the abundance of autumn. It’s the taste of onions that have been sauteed in olive oil for hours, slowly roasted so the turn into savory candy.
Everyone is welcome at the table. The more the merrier. There is plenty for everyone. The sun shines on everyone equally. In fact, even if one dish is burned or too sour, it doesn’t matter. The whole scene is so abundant and welcoming that you are not even particularly attracted to the sweet or repelled by the sour.
As people eat, as the hunger pangs fade, everything mellows out. The spikes of emotion soften. We can sit back in our chairs a little bit and take things in with some perspective. We don’t have to rush to judgement. We can forgive each other a bit more easily.
We feel steady and grounded enough in ourselves to be curious about other people. We can ask about someone else’s family instead of bragging about ours. We feel so comfortable that it’s like we’re sending out our tentacles of curiosity and interest to other people.
This creates a feeling of enrichment. You genuinely want to know about the person sitting next to you. You are interested in their story, how they came to be here tonight, where they got that broach. Because you are so grounded, this doesn’t come off as creepy. It makes the other person feel good. Feel worthy of attention, feel appreciated.
A Distorted & Neurotic Ratna side
It’s pretty easy to see how this wisdom Ratna can be flipped to the neurotic aspect, right?
Neurotic Ratna is over-the-top. It’s greedy beyond belief. It’s having millions and billions of dollars and still wanting more. It’s golden toilets in the penthouse apartment that you never even visit. You had them installed because you thought it would make you feel good to take a shit into a golden bowl, and maybe it did the first time, but now you’ve moved on.
A reasonable person with some grounding would feel some shame or guilt, but the neurotic Ratna person feels pride. Pride in the wealth, in the display, in the waste of it. There’s no connection to the people who don’t have as much. There’s barely any appreciation for the things we do have.
Neurotic Ratna is a pure consumerist shopping mindset. Mindlessly acquiring more in hopes of filling up this void in our hearts.
I have heard that for some people, the greatest luxury is to go to a restaurant, order everything on the menu so that the table is piled high with food, eat just a little bit, and walk out leaving the rest for others to clean up.
Land of the Hungry Ghosts
In Himalayan Buddhism there’s a particular realm called “The Land of the Hungry Ghosts”. This is supposedly the place you go after you die if you’ve been greedy in this life. Lama Liz mentioned it this morning.
You are reborn as a sort of human, but you have a tiny mouth, and a belly swollen by malnutrition, because your throat is long and skinny like a giraffe. If you are reborn in this realm, you spend all your waking hours grabbing what you can find to eat and shoving it into your mouth. But it can’t get through your tiny thin throat. That’s neurotic Ratna. Nothing satisfies.
Neurotic Ratna is called “Poverty Mentality” the feeling of never having enough. My abiding fear, which comes up with literally every dinner party I cook, is the fear of running out of food.
Right now I’m afraid that this talk won’t be long enough, won’t be good enough, will leave people dissatisfied or un-satiated. That’s Ratna neurosis.
How do we flip back? How do we re-find the wisdom aspect, reconnect with generosity?
Have you heard of the Allegory of the Long Spoons?
There’s a land somewhere, not too far from the hungry ghosts maybe, where all the inhabitants are seated at a huge table laden with food. The problem is that they can only eat the food with the spoons provided, and the spoons are like three, four feet long.
They are out to here! [mouth trying to eat off a spoon that long].
So these poor people are starving, frustrated, angry, with all the food in front of them but unable to get it into their own mouths.
Until one bodhisattva has the idea to feed someone across the table with her spoon.
Then everyone can feed each other and everyone can have enough.
The way that we get out of the neurotic aspect of Ratna, the greed, the hoarding, the indulgence, is to think of others. To give first. To share. To look out for someone else.
One of our meditation teachers used to say “If you want to be sad, think of yourself. If you want to be happy, think of someone else.”
It’s maybe not that simple. But it is absolutely amazing how being generous first can change an entire interaction. Let someone else go ahead of you in line. Give a little bit more than is easy. Surprise someone on a tough day. Or sometimes, leave someone alone. Give them space. Notice where they are and see them clearly enough to leave them alone when they need to be alone.
When you are in touch with your inner richness, your inner solidity and strength, it’s easier to be generous to others. It’s easier to share, to give, to look out for people who aren’t feeling that way at the moment.
Starts with Appreciating Ourselves
So how do we cultivate that feeling of solidity, plenty? It’s easier for some than for others. I think it starts with appreciating ourselves. I used to do this silly thing when I was training for marathons or half-marathons.
They weren’t easy for me because, as you can see, I don’t have the normal lithe svelte lean runner’s bod. But for various reasons I was training for these long races in the New England winter. At the end of the run, as I walked back home, I would give myself a little round of applause.
In the cold, in the dark, steam coming off me in the streetlight I would clap for myself.
Does that sound dumb? It sounds kind of dumb to me. But I was trying to encourage myself and appreciate myself for doing something hard and important. And you know what, it worked. I ran many half marathons and the Boston marathon. Added years to my life, even kind of enjoyed it.
In this retreat, please appreciate yourself.
Give yourself encouragement. Pay attention to the voice that you use when you are talking to yourself.
I think you’ll find that the more you give yourself love and encouragement, even in a sort of performative way, the more you’ll develop a sense of strength and solidity. And from there, you can share more easily with others.
Enlightened Ratna Action is Enriching. Having and Giving the feeling of enough.
It is an ongoing and underlying theme throughout the Vajrayana - You are enough.
You. As you currently sit here. Just as you are. You are enough.
It may not feel that way sometimes, most of the time. But if you take one lesson, one message out of encountering the Ratna energy and the Buddha Ratnasambhava, it’s that you, with all your wisdoms and your neuroses, are absolutely, completely 100% enough.