3/26 Ratna Talk

The skanda of feeling. The quality of intelligent expansiveness like tentacles or antennae.

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:

Vajra/Dorje: indestructible diamond like. Can’t be destroyed. Endures. Wholeness. Goes lifetime to lifetime. Innate Wholeness, nature, fundamental awareness.

The whole path is returning to, remembering, these core qualities.

The idea that we could work with our emotions is so powerful. Usually, if we like what we are feeling, we try to hold on to it. If we don’t like it, we push it away. Usually when we are not enjoying our emotion, we freeze it, reify it, make it solid. Then we tell ourselves a story about it. Then it’s stuck. It’s an object. We are the subject and we can define ourselves in relationship with it.

But actually, emotions and their energies are not fixed.

There’s something about our emotions that can remind us that everything is sacred. We can feel them so much.

Vajrayana as a training in sacred perception. Seeing ourselves, others, the whole world as sacred.

Five Buddha families are a description, a symbol, of the energy of emotions returned to its essence. Under the story, without the labels, just as they are.

They are symbols, but they are more. There’s something mysterious going on there.

Five distorted emotions:

Ignorance

Aggression

Anger

Jealousy

Pride

Infusing the distorted emotion with compassion, love and care. “Distorted” and “Clarified”

Five wisdoms:

Ratna (jewel): Pride and poverty mentality transforms into the wisdom of equanimity. Earth.

Vajra (diamond): Anger transforms into mirror-like wisdom. Water.

Padma (lotus): Clinging or Grasping transformed into discriminating wisdom. Fire.

Karma (action): Jealousy and Speed transformed into all accomplishing action. Wind and Air.

Buddha (awakened): Ignorance transformed into dharmadatu wisdom. Space.

Wanted to start by talking about the lineage that these teachings come from…

Let’s start with what is lineage.

Family lineage

For all their faults, they were survivors. We definitely wouldn’t be here without them. Immense suffering, sacrifice. For all the problems they had and passed on to us, they passed on some good things too.

Lineage is important in VY. Knowing where these teachings came from. Genuine and time tested.

Buddha

Vajradhara, Tilo, Naro, Marpa, Mila, Gampopa

Trungpa, Rinpoche

All of us. This is our lineage too.

Maitri space awareness

a way of connecting our everyday experience to sacred world

By working with the buddha families, we discover that we already have certain qualities.

Our confusion is also our potential.

A Personal description of Ratna

One of my favorite things is 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. Clarified and Distorted.

Here’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

Lama Liz talked about addiction, self medication as a confused manifestation of Ratna energy. I know this is familiar to many of you, either personally or with someone you love.

In the practice session this morning, I went back to the feeling of a binge drinking episode:

• The surface feeling of “Who cares?” Why not? Go for it
• The selfishness and arrogance of that
• But underneath, the feeling that I didn’t matter. That my actions, my behavior, didn’t really matter. Didn’t matter to myself - the feeling of worthlessness and shouldn’t matter to others - the feeling or expression of arrogance.
• Isolating myself from others and from myself through alcohol.

Chemically, addiction to alcohol is actually an addiction to the natural opiate that our body makes in response to the neurotoxin of alcohol that we are drinking. We aren’t actually addicted to alcohol. We are addicted to the body’s natural pain killer that our body produces when we pour this poison into it!

Luckily, if you find yourself in this situation, there are chemicals you can get to help reduce the cravings for that opiate. I used one called Naltrexone, which I’m a huge fan of. And there are lots of amazing paths and support groups. I just spent last weekend with an old friend who is 15 years sober via AA. So powerful.

So you are not alone and you are not cursed with this affliction for the rest of your life.

There’s another very present example of Ratna neurosis in our society… The current resident at the White House is the shining example of confused or distorted Ratna energy.

Bluster

Starved for attention

Unending hole, bottomless pit of neediness. Nothing is every enough.

Cartoon parody of pride, wealth, gold toilets in his Manhattan apartment.

Spraypainting gold all over the white house. The new ballroom no one wants.

Having millions and billions of dollars and still wanting more.

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.

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.

Underneath all that bluster is a lonely, terrified child who never felt held, safe, or unconditional love. But now he’s so covered over with stuff to make himself feel big… it’s such an example of seeking confirmation and relief from the outside instead of coming to terms with, healing what’s inside. And you can see the damage it does to the people, the society, the world around him.

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.