So I approach Marianne instead. One evening at the kitchen table, I ask, “Can you tell me what the essence of this Vajrayana practice is? I know Buddhism is about being liberated from suffering. But how do the practices here do that? I’m totally lost.”
Marianne nods sympathetically. “Really, it’s just about transformation.”
“How?”
“Well, as humans, we’re mired in past karma and have all sorts of obscurations—emotional, mental… We practice in order to transform all of that, and to do the same for all other beings.”
Marianne points to a picture of a four-armed Buddha sitting cross-legged, two palms pressed together and the other two holding a lotus and a crystal necklace. “That’s Chenrezig, Buddha of Compassion. When we do Chenrezig practice, we visualize every being in the universe as this embodiment of compassion. The mantra we say is the expression of compassion. When we imagine ourselves as Chenrezig, we dissolve all of the emotional afflictions and mental obscurations to become pure enlightened awareness itself.” She smiles at me. “It’s sort of the fast track to liberation.”
One day, I finally get my nerve up to approach Lama Sonam and ask him what advantages this type of Buddhism has over, say, Zen or insight meditation. I describe how confusing it all is and that, while I’m still holding on to Shyalpa Rinpoche’s insistence that the view is the most important thing, I’m not finding any clear view at all here.
Lama Sonam sits down at the kitchen table and waits until I’ve exhausted my thinly veiled complaints.
“In the past,” he says, “these techniques weren’t as necessary. People’s minds were more tamed. It was easier to practice, and easier to accomplish realization. But things are different now. This is an age of decline. All of humanity has slipped down, including spiritual masters. Everyone is so-so.”
“So?”
“So you need skillful means, forceful means, for uprooting ignorance and desire. For transforming aggression. The Vajrayana is powerful. Through it, enlightenment is accomplished quickly through the skillful means.”
“So the practices here are the answer?”
Lama Sonam furrows his brow. “The answer? What is the question?”
“How I’m supposed to do things.”
He looks at me tenderly but possibly with growing concern. His English isn’t the best and my confusion is vast.
“You’re here,” he smiles. “In the community, with others. Surrounded by the Dharma. Learning. How many have this precious opportunity?” He pauses, then says, “The main thing is to be kind.”
His eyes flash at me—just for that one sentence. It’s like a flashbulb goes off behind his eyes and there’s an illuminated moment. Kindness, seemingly such a benign concept, is really a huge step beyond mindfulness and acceptance. Lama Sonam and I stare at the picture of Chenrezig, embodiment of compassion, and once again I have that same feeling as when I first walked into the Drikung Meditation Center: I might not understand everything, but I am on the right path.
On the second floor of the house, we have a library full of books on Vajrayana Buddhism. All of these, without exception, describe what it is and all of the wild ways it teaches people to achieve an awakened state. And just like DBT and CBT, it comes with a toolbox full of skills and techniques to achieve its purpose. Mindfulness and meditation are among the tools, but Vajrayana practice uses more intense techniques—you could even say confrontational. Call it desperate measures for desperate times. Marianne used the word “transforming,” and Lama Sonam talked about “uprooting.” Whatever words you use, it’s a far cry from simple techniques of acceptance and nonjudgment.
As I burrow through the center’s books, the intensity of the approach comes out in the language itself: eradicating negative thoughts and cultivating positive ones; purifying negative behaviors and engaging in beneficial ones. This type of practice doesn’t mean simply letting emotions come and go, like leaves on a stream or clouds in the sky; it aims to eliminate all disturbing emotions. You don’t just let peacefulness come into you; you generate it through specific attitudes of compassion and loving-kindness. You don’t just try to be selfless; you visualize offering up your body and everything you possess for the benefit of others. In one practice, you literally breathe in the pain of others and exhale all of your goodness for their needs. This type of Buddhism actually sounds a lot like the DBT skills for change, which are usually described as cognitive behavioral.
Indeed, the whole gist of this approach is aimed at transforming the mind, and I finally start to understand why Marianne, Alexis, and the others sit around visualizing and praying to Chenrezig—not because they think the four-armed Buddha is a god; they’re using the image and its enlightened quality as a way to train their own minds in compassion. With Vajrayana, the practice is considered to go so far as to imbue all beings throughout time and space with compassion, in the process transforming the mind from narrow, clinging, and self-obsessed to spacious, generous, and selfless.
This sounds like a noble thing to want, but I continue to wonder: If you take away the self (which, of course, I’ve been furiously trying to build, given it’s so damn unstable), then what can you rely on? What do you have if you don’t identify with your thoughts, emotions, or any other aspects of yourself? Buddhism says that everything tangible and concrete is ultimately empty because it’s impermanent. So what is enduring? I can hear Shyalpa Rinpoche’s voice clearly: Buddha-nature. It’s impossible to destroy Buddha-nature because it has never been born. It’s simply what we are: primordial purity, innate intelligence, the awakened mind—that diamond under the dirt. Learning all of this rouses me a bit, and I start to at least think about going downstairs to practice. Right now, in my room, I can hear the Buddhists chanting and their bells ringing, followed by silence as the world is transformed into battalions of light and kindness. It makes a great counterpoint to the click of my mouse as I scan the profiles on my newest online dating find, Fling.com: “the hottest place to hook up.”
27
The Meat Man
By now, you surely know that it’s only a matter of time before I get into trouble. Just because I can’t have sex in the house doesn’t mean I’m going to give up men. The desire realm (as conceptualized in Buddhism) has its hold on me, and it’s going to take more than a few mantras and a zap from Lama Sonam for me to break free. And if I simply moved in here and changed everything, perhaps I wouldn’t be practicing genuine Vajrayana. In this tradition, everything is fodder for transformation. If someone throws a brick at you, it’s an opportunity to practice compassion—to realize that the other person is generating bad karma and therefore doing more harm to himself or herself than to you, or so the reasoning goes. And besides, the only way to reach enlightenment is to purify your own karma and cultivate positive qualities. So that brick hits a lot of targets at once. The trick is to be able to use every situation with that kind of skillful means.
So when I meet Matthew that summer, after living at the center for a couple of months, it simply brings to the surface the passion play of the dualism and conflict happening within myself. People gather for meditation practice, and where is Kiera? About to sneak out with her motorcycle helmet and her high heels in a bag to meet a man who not only drinks and smokes pot on a daily basis but is a diehard atheist. He’s also a computer programmer, amateur pilot, and motorcyclist, and he plays guitar in a band. Okay, so it’s a country-western band, but I’m not too choosy at the moment. Given that he’s also the father of two young boys and one court battle shy of divorce after twenty years of marriage, you could even say he’s virgin territory for me. Altogether, he pushes a ton of my buttons: bad boy, father, adventurer. How can I not go out with him?
As I’m trying to sneak out for our first date, Alexis suddenly appears in the doorway and says, “Don’t do it.” I pretend I don’t know what she’s talking about even as Matthew is revving his motorcycle under the prayer flags.
“It’s just a date,” I insist.
“Yeah, right, and when has it ever been ‘just a date’?”
As I make a break for it and pull my helmet on, Alexis steps outside, followed by Lama Sonam. Reluctantly, I turn and introduce them. Alexis eyeballs me with that “you’re an idiot but I love you” look that I’m growing so fond of, then turns to Matthew and says, “Bring her home safe.”
Once we’re over at Matthew’s place, he asks, “What are they, your parents?” I tell him that I need a lot of nurturing. “You don’t think it’s kind of weird that you live in a house where people have to check out your dates—not to mention the whole religion vibe? Doesn’t it spook you to be around all those statues?” He shudders. “It reminds me of the Catholic Church, but worse… It’s like a cult.”
“For your information, there is no God in Buddhism. And there’s also no form of punishment, only karma. No one’s forcing anyone to believe anything. The Buddha is just a guy who figured out how to be free from all the crap we suffer from every day.”
Matthew shrugs and goes to his fridge. “Can you stop your self-denial for a short while and have some good food?” I have no problem with that. Nor with the way his hands come to rest on my hips after we hug each other, or how he kisses.
“Please tell me you didn’t sleep with him,” Alexis cries when she sees me.
“I didn’t…yet.”
“You know what’s going to happen, right? If you sleep with him? If you make yourself vulnerable?”
I nod. I’ve told Alexis everything about BPD. I even explained my different parts, which means she now cares about them.
“It’s your six-year-old, isn’t it? She wants to be taken care of and he’s this newly divorced daddy.” I nod again.
“Let the Dharma take care of you, Kiera! Let the community here meet your needs. He’s not going to do anything positive for you.”
I know, I know. But it’s like telling an alcoholic not to take a drink just as the bottle is opened. Alexis shakes her head. “Let me know when it’s over,” she says, “and I’ll help you put yourself back together.”
I wish I could say that the same things aren’t happening again. But they are. Once Matthew and I have sex, within a week I’m spending half of my nights there. As much as he needs someone to replace his recently departed wife and two boys, I need someone to contain and regulate me, and I don’t seem to be able to let the Sangha do it. For one, the Sangha doesn’t offer regular morning sex. And no one from the Sangha emails me at work to ask what I’d like for dinner: glazed duck, slow-cooked ribs, pan-seared scallops, asparagus, gnocchi? When I show up at Matthew’s, he’ll be downstairs, wearing an apron, laying out a cheese board with unusual chèvres and bries, and arranging grapes in a bowl. After dinner, he turns on the TV and puts one arm around me, the other hand wrapped around a beer. We go through the same rituals every day: each night brushing our teeth and flossing as we stand side-by-side at the double sinks in the bathroom, and fucking in the morning. He’s baffled that he can’t bring me to orgasm the way he could with his wife, and I do the usual “it’s the medication” thing, though I know at this point it’s much deeper than that. I briefly consider enlisting him in trying to figure out alternative methods, but Matthew isn’t a fixer. He shrugs and says okay, and from then on my pleasure is in my own hands, so to speak. Afterward we shower together, soaping each other’s backs. He makes me eggs any way I request and hands me a travel mug of coffee for the drive to work.
In no time I am completely miserable, but I’m so tightly tucked into this arrangement that I can’t find my legs to walk out. I’m miserable because Matthew and I are like oil and water. He’s the anti-Kiera, or maybe I’m the anti-Matthew. He doesn’t talk about feelings, he hates religion, and he has no interest in mental illness or anything I’ve survived. When I start a conversation about politics, he gets an amused look, like “Aw, isn’t she cute? She’s trying to be smart.” And then he ends the conversation with some definitive statement that I can’t rebut. Plus, there’s the unfortunate fact that he’s in a country-western band. But none of that matters when I’m in his arms—or when he’s feeding me pan-seared scallops.
The most surreal aspect is how I’m vacillating between two worlds, bouncing back and forth between two lives, two perspectives, two identities. The Buddhists say that we’re all trapped in dualism, and that seems especially applicable to me, here, now. There is the world according to Matthew, and the world according to Buddhism, and I have one of my feet in each. In Matthew’s world, things have no meaning other than what you give them, or they happen randomly and often unfairly, and actions have no consequences as long as you cover your tracks. Quality of life is measured by how high you can get and for how long, whether on music, wine, good food, or pot. In his world, nothing trumps a good lamb stew and back-to-back episodes of South Park.
Meanwhile, in the world according to Buddhism, there is absolutely no randomness or unfairness; everything exists because of cause and effect—the law of karma. Buddhism says there is a true reality, and that we just can’t see it because it’s obscured by our own ignorance and negative emotions. The success of a life is determined by the positive inner qualities you cultivate and the amount of merit you generate through generosity and selflessness.
And the world according to Kiera? It entirely depends on where I sleep at night, and this flip-flopping of perspectives exhausts me. I want to solidify my position, yet neither situation holds me securely. In fact, it feels like each drives me toward its opposite. Matthew’s nurturing style is sporadic and interspersed with wildly insensitive comments and outright dismissiveness, which upsets me enough that sometimes I drive home in tears. Then, when I’m settled back into the inwardly focused and ascetic world of the Sangha, I feel itchy and trapped in a different way. I want more stimulation, physical touch, and a motorcycle or a man between my legs.
If I were looking at my relationship with Matthew from the perspective of my “disorder,” I’d probably still be thinking in terms of relapse or being symptomatic, and I’d be inclined to believe that I’m not making progress on my core problems. But from the Vajrayana perspective, my behavior doesn’t create such a gloomy picture. Not that it’s pretty, but that’s what’s so powerful about the practice: recognizing how even poison is a form of medicine when used the right way. I realize that perhaps Ethan has always been taking this approach with me.
When I tell Ethan about this latest affair, he wants to know what’s happening with my parts. We establish that the young parts appreciate Matthew. He cuddles them, feeds them, and gets them up in the morning. The older parts enjoy his male attention, being touched and fucked. But other parts are unhappy. Kiera the Buddhist wants him to stop bashing her worldview. Kiera the intellectual would like to have some deep conversation. Kiera the ManRay chick would give anything to ditch the country music and wear a corset. And more than anything, I want to be loved—not just plugged into someone else’s self-serving needs (which, of course, is exactly what I’m doing to Matthew as well). I want too many conflicting things, and this time there’s no synthesis to the dialectic, only more polarization: I want freedom from desire. I want sex. I want to do no harm. I want a big fat steak.
This goes on for another month, and whenever I come home from work to pick up my overnight bag, Alexis has just one thing to say: “Dump the jerk.”
One of the benefits of being part of a Buddhist lineage is that you have the opportunity to work with many teachers. The Drikung lineage has monasteries in Nepal, India, and Tibet, and many of the Lamas and Rinpoches periodically travel to the United States to visit and teach, which is what Ontul Rinpoche will be doing at our center toward the end of summer. I had planned on blowing off the teachings by Ontul Rinpoche, a visiting Buddhist master, until I heard they would focus on bodhicitta (literally “awakening mind” or “altruistic mind”), a practice of compassion that seeks to attain liberation in order to benefit all beings and free them from their suffering. The specific practice Ontul Rinpoche leads us thr
ough, called tonglen, involves exchanging yourself for others on a mental level. You willingly give your happiness to others and take the suffering and hardships of all others onto yourself. This sounds awfully masochistic at face value, and it also means you have to believe that there is enough goodness inside you to be helpful to others.
While he leads us through an exercise where we imagine breathing in darkness and exhaling light, I’m struck by the poverty of my inner resources. I’m still trying to suck in all the love and light I can get from others—preferably from someone with a penis. By the time Ontul Rinpoche has us inhaling the black vapors of the world’s pain and exhaling the white light of happiness, sending it out to others, I finally get it. Tonglen, bodhicitta, transforming the mind—all boil down to one critical factor for me: I’m not able to tap into compassion for others because I lack it for myself. This is my core problem right now. I’m not a codependent woman who loves too much, or a recovering alcoholic borderline, or a fuck-up. I’m a woman who cannot abide herself. Here I am, living at one of the most special places in the world, with the opportunity to get support and guidance on every level, and I’m sleeping with a man who has just started calling me his “fat, stinky girlfriend.”
I request an interview with Ontul Rinpoche, and when I sit down with him the next day, I ask how I’m supposed to exchange myself for others and have compassion when I don’t have this for myself.
He stares at me for a long time before answering: “Despite our goal of becoming selfless, self-love is essential. And it’s critical in the beginning. Self-love is you extending compassion to yourself as you would do for any other sentient beings. Bodhicitta is inexhaustible. It flows wherever it is needed. If you hate yourself, you are cutting off the root of bodhicitta.”
Buddha and the Borderline Page 27
