Examining the Waterfall

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Bringing Virtue Into Life”

My experience has been that here in the west, when students come to Dharma, when they embrace Dharma and even when they’ve been practicing Dharma for a long time, they have the attitude that we, as people, are going to that church or that temple which is out there somewhere. It’s an incorrect attitude that bears examining.   We go there and we act in a certain way according to the beliefs of that church or that temple, and then we go home and we continue on with our lives as though our lives have not been changed, as though nothing has been heard at this church or temple that is relevant to our lives.  We don’t even realize that we’ve done that, but it’s such a deep prejudice that each of us has—this idea that one’s spiritual life or one’s religious life is somehow separate from the rest of one’s life.  For westerners it is a deep prejudice to the point where it is almost invisible.  It is so much a part of us that it has become, in a sense, part of our background, part of the landscape within our minds.  It’s hard for us, at least, to pick this out and say “Look at that.  I act this way when I’m around the temple and I’m thinking about Dharma and I’m thinking about the Buddha’s teachings. Specifically when I’m doing particular Dharma practice, I act this way.  Then I go home and I proceed as though I had never heard of it.”

We don’t even realize to what extent we do that.  Oh, it’s not to say that we don’t hear anything and we don’t try to do anything with our practice.  For instance, if a teacher were to say to us “All right, now I’ve given you this empowerment.”  And often when a teacher gives empowerment,  the teacher will say “Now I’ve given you this empowerment, I need something from you in exchange. And what I need from you in exchange is the commitment to good moral conduct,” let’s say.  Or “What I need from you in exchange is the commitment to never kill or harm another living being.”  So when we have a directive like that we can fixate on that.  We can put that in our pocket.  That’s a direct order.  We can hear that.  That’s something we can carry around and it’s easy.

Maybe we go home and maybe we don’t kill anything anymore.  Maybe we do things like, instead of getting out the old fly swatter, we capture the flies and we take them outside. So that’s our big effort as a Buddhist.  The flies are thrilled.  But the rest of what the teacher taught—those thoughts that should gentle the mind and turn the mind toward Dharma, that should make us see more clearly, that should make us live better and in a higher way, a more responsible way—these things we often miss.  These things we don’t carry home with us.

A good “for instance” is the idea that samsara, or the cycle of death and rebirth, is tricky, seductive, that it is a narcotic, that samsaric living deludes us into a feeling of safety.  In fact, our lives are samsaric lives. Since we have been born, they are involved in the cycle of birth and death. Our lives, in fact, according to the Dharma teaching, pass as quickly as a waterfall rushing down a mountain.  This is an excellent example.  This is something that every teacher will teach you the first time they see you; and they will teach you every time they see you until the last time they see you.  In one form or another, you will hear this same teaching and these are some of the thoughts that we are taught that turn our mind toward Dharma.  That’s an interesting thought, and actually that’s a very interesting image.  It’s a perfect image, in fact, by which this teaching can be taught. The reason why is that when you look at a waterfall rushing down a mountain, you might see a waterfall that has been rushing down a mountain for hundreds of years, thousands of years.  You could go to someplace where there is a very high mountain.  Perhaps there’s been a waterfall there for a thousand years and you might think to yourself “My life is going to be as fast as a waterfall rushing down a mountain.  Good deal.” Except that’s not how it’s meant, you see, because what the Buddha is talking about is that, if you took one cup of water and dropped it from the top of the waterfall, it would be down at the bottom of the waterfall in a flash.  You couldn’t even follow it with your eyes, it would happen so fast, and that is how fast our lives pass.

Now when we are looking at our lives, we look at them the way we look at a waterfall going down a mountain.  We don’t see the cup of water.  We don’t think like that.  We don’t want to think like that!  Who wants to think like that?!  We see the waterfall as being something stable, so this analogy becomes perfect.  When we look at our lives, the evidence is clear. I don’t know about you, but I don’t look the same way as I did ten years ago.  Do you?  Even if you are 20, ten years ago you were ten.  You still don’t look the same way as you did ten years ago.  When you are 45, you know you don’t look the same way as you did when you were 35.  So the evidence is clear and you see it every morning.  You see it every morning when you brush your teeth or you do your hair or shave, or whatever it is that you do.  You know about it.  In fact, you’re playing this little game with yourself.  I know because we all play this little game.  Trust me on this.  Especially the women can really identify this.  We play this little game with ourselves.  We’re not graying because we can go to the hairdresser and he will fix it.  Every now and then we get really brave when the guy is up there fooling with our hair and putting the glop on.  We say, “O.K., how bad is it?  How gray am I?”  And I don’t know about your hairdresser, but my hairdresser takes my hand and lovingly speaks to me and says “You will never be gray.  I will help.”  So the delusion goes on.  See?  It simply goes on, and we’re not facing it.  We’re not facing the fact that this thing that we are most afraid of is actually happening.

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