Do I really want to change?

We all have ups and downs in our practice, don’t we? Having ups and downs is quite normal and natural. How we handle the ups and downs is what is really important because first we have to discriminate between big ups and downs and little ones. When it’s just little things that we’re not happy with ourselves about, we should try to correct them, but they’re not a huge, enormous thing that’s upsetting our mind forever. 

I want to talk about the big ups and downs, not the “I got irritated at somebody this morning” up and down—the bigger kind of ups and downs that really plague our mind for a period of time. There are different ways that people handle these. One person may say, “Oh yeah, up and down, I’m really caught in this negative kind of habit. My mind’s really out of control, but I really can’t push myself; maybe I just need to leave it for the time being and let this work its way out.” 

Or maybe we can give a whole description, a great intellectual description of our up and down: “I have these afflictions, which arose from these causes, which go on to do this, and these are the negative karmas they create.” It’s a very good, mapped out, intellectual understanding. But then it’s kind of like somebody who’s a drug addict and can give you their whole thing: “I’m addicted to this for these reasons, and this is the problem I have, but I’m in this situation and it’s just really hard to stop. And I don’t really have all the conditions to stop. And it’s not that bad, is it? Really? And I’ll just let it ride for a while and be compassionate with myself. Anyway, if I stop being a drug addict right away, all the other people I take drugs with will be really upset, and that isn’t any good for them. So, I know it’s unhealthy to hang around with these people who are addicts, but I don’t want to upset them. I’ll just work on it slowly. Eventually it will get worked out.” That’s one person. 

Then there’s another person who says, “Boy, I’m going up and down, and the root of this is in my mind. It has nothing to do with the external situation—what other people are saying, what other people are doing. It has to do with how I am conceptualizing the situation. And due to my conceptualizations, what kind of emotions are arising in my mind?” And they also say, “This is something I need to work with inside myself, whether other people agree or don’t agree or whatever. I have to solve this inside myself and get over this because if I don’t do something with my crazy mind, this is just going to keep going on and on and on and on…”

 It’s not like that person’s saying, “I have to be over it by Tuesday,” but they really want to overcome that problem. They really want to let go of whatever it is they’re holding onto. 

The first person doesn’t really want to let go. Deep inside, they don’t really want to. When you get in that state where you don’t really want to change—or maybe intellectually you want to change but in your heart you don’t really—I think that’s when we get really stuck. It’s when we’re saying, “I want to change,” but we really don’t want to. That’s the first person. 

The second person really wants to; they know it’s going to take effort, and they aren’t making up excuses for why it’s not being done. There are probably many other possibilities between these two examples. I put up quite stark examples, but there are probably many other varieties of dealing with things. So, it’s important to just look at how we deal with it when we have a problem and when our mind is going up and down. Do we really want to change or do we have to be frank and admit we don’t really want to change? I think we need to have that level of honesty with ourselves.

Audience: Let’s say that we conclude that deep down we don’t really want to change, but the wisdom part of us knows we should change and it would be much better in the long run. So, is it a matter of just trying to meditate over and over on the reasons why change is good and hopefully it will trickle down at some point?

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): So, you’re saying inside, deep down, you don’t really want to change, but intellectually, you know you should. You should and you ought to and you’re supposed to, and…

Audience: So, what do you do? You can’t just give up, it’s an affliction.

VTC: You have to deal with where you’re at. If you really want to change, then you get into meditating on the defects of the state that you’re in, and you really go about doing those meditations and changing. And it takes time, but you work at it in a consistent way. In other words, you overcome the mind that doesn’t really want to change. But if you really don’t want to change, then go do what you need to do. Nobody else can make you change, and if you don’t really want to change, then what is there? Keep going to teachings because that always puts a good imprint on your mind, and maybe after some time—a few months, a few years, a few lifetimes, whatever—then it will fall together, and you’ll say, “Oh, I do want to change.” But if inside you’re really holding quite strongly to thinking, “This is my identity, and this is too scary for me to change, and besides, I like this identity,” then go do what you need to do and live a virtuous life as much as you can. What else can I say?

Audience: From personal experience, it can be easy to stop when you think you intellectually  understand what’s going on and then wonder why things aren’t changing when you haven’t gone a step further to actually really put effort into applying the antidotes. Maybe fear or anxiety or just habitual energy holds you back from progressing. I think this might come from the way I’ve been schooled to think, “Understand and that’s enough.” Like at school I was taught: “Learn this, get it, understand the points, and that’s it.” Whereas with the Dharma, it doesn’t work that way. You have to be more engaged.

VTC: Yes. I think we do need to be more engaged, and you’re right, we may have a lot of habits, a lot of conditioning. But you see, those habits and that conditioning that are keeping us from changing are some of the things that we have to change. So then we have to ask ourselves, “Do I want to change that old habit and conditioning? Do I want to change that, or do I see it as really not such a problem at all?”

Audience: I think one of the things that I’ve become more aware of is the screenwriter inside of me who tells the story of why I’m totally justified in being afflicted. It’s got to be told that an afflicted state of mind is fake news, is erroneous, and that for me to understand that the story I’m telling myself is the actual cause for my affliction, not the behavior of some other sentient being outside myself. The cause of my affliction is inside. So, learning how to discern between erroneous and what’s actually happening has been important. I just love my stories! There’s something about the drama of samsara that keeps the identity moving, that keeps the I going, that keeps the body feeling like it’s alive and there’s a sense of self. It’s so helpful to understand that by taking the erroneous storyline out, you become truer to yourself. There’s this idea of deconstructing some self that just is not worth it. It’s not worth the time, not worth the drama, not worth the heartache. But you’ve said a number of times that it’s important to realize when you have an affliction in your mind and to know that you have an erroneous conception going on. That has been extremely helpful lately as I’m trying to get underneath these core, root beliefs I have. It’s really helpful.

VTC: Yes, because as long as you’re holding onto those beliefs then you don’t really want to change. Or sometimes you recognize the beliefs, but you still don’t want to really change.

Audience: The only thing that has come to mind is that we must be so selective about the situations we put ourselves in—like a place of work. I remember when I first started teaching, I was very impressionable about the culture of the staff and what everyone else there held to be important. And at one point—it was just shocking—I was hanging out with this one woman, and she swore a lot, so within a short period of time I was swearing a lot. So, what the group of people held as important or valuable, even ethical, I just sort of drifted into, and it was shocking. But when in a virtuous environment, the support is beyond what I think we often can grasp.

Audience: For me, it seems like there are two very strong emotions or afflictions playing. One is the main affliction that I’m trying to work with, and the other one is the fear. So, there’s fear of  letting go of an identity; I think it’s very similar to what Venerable Semkye was talking about in that it feels like, “If I let go of that identity, what is left?” It’s almost as if you erase that identity and then there is nothing there. “What is there to hold onto? What is there to stand on?” So, it’s not just the main affliction—the attachment—but it’s the fear that goes along with it that can be so overwhelming as well.

VTC: That’s very true, and that’s why we need to really understand why holding onto those old assumptions, why holding onto those identities, why holding onto those stories causes suffering. Because we can’t just stop with, “It’s scary to change,” but we have to go beyond that and say, “But this stuff that I’m stuck in is what’s really causing me misery. It’s not the change that’s going to cause me misery—it’s the stuff I’m stuck in that’s causing me misery.” But as long as we believe it’s the change that’s causing us misery, then the fear is immobilizing us, and we won’t change.

Audience: I have been in the same situation, and this is something I found helpful; although the change is scary, I’ve tried to take some time and imagine what it would be like to be on the other side of that change. That’s been very helpful because sometimes it’s a lot better than where I am right now.

VTC: Yes. That’s a good idea to imagine what it would feel like to get over whatever it is that’s holding you back. “What would that feel like? If I changed, what would my life be like? What would my mind be like? How good it would feel!” And then that gives us more courage to go ahead and do it. But when we are grasping so strongly to the little straws of pleasure that we have now, or when we’re immobilized by guilt and fear, then we’re pretty stuck.

Audience: For me, somehow knowing my course, knowing where I’m going, what’s my reason for being in life or where’s my refuge—even when I know I’m stuck and I’m moving slowly, if I can stay in touch with the thoughts, “Where am I going? What’s the point of all this,” then whether it’s slow or fast moving, it doesn’t really matter because I know where I’m headed. If I lose that, then I’m just in a morass of fear and wild things and grasping whatever I can hang onto because I don’t know where I am. But I feel like in my life, many times if I can get to that—”What’s the bottom line reason for being here, what am I about?”—and I take refuge in that, then the change will come as I can make it happen.

VTC: That’s when you really see what taking refuge means. Taking refuge means that you’re very clear about the direction of your life, where you want to go. When you’re in this dilemma of thinking, “Oh, but I should, but I can’t, but really for the benefit of others, I should keep on going, but I don’t know, that’s not working; it’s very scary to change,” then where is your refuge? I haven’t heard the words Buddha, Dharma, or Sangha once in all of that chatter. Or “purpose of my life,” that phrase is about our long term purpose. Short term purpose: “Yeah, I can shoot up; the purpose of my life is to self-medicate.” But we’re not talking about that kind of purpose. But it’s really knowing, deep underneath, what we really want to do and then being true to that, not going back on it. That’s why they say practicing Dharma is swimming upstream.

Audience: When you were speaking, it reminded me when I get stuck in that, what I often think of is when Khensur Jampa Tegchog Rinpoche was here, and he said, “It’s not who you are that’s important.” Because we get caught up in these identities, and I think that’s where I run into problems. When you’ve made your identity about things you are now letting go of, then you are in freefall for a while, and there’s another identity you’re trying to grab onto, right? So, he said, “It’s not who you are, it’s what you can do with this life.” I think I got caught up in some kind of identity trip, and for a long time here, I was in-between learning, really, what self-confidence is, and I think I had it really mixed up with the sense of identity, like “I can do this. I can do this.” I felt like I had this profession—whatever it is—that isn’t going to be stable, but to have a sense of self-confidence and what would it be confidence in? I think you have to explore that for yourself, but for me, it falls into what we’ve taken refuge in. So then it comes back to, “What is this life for?” That’s what you’re saying, and when I’m lost, it’s when I’m stuck in feeling, “What am I, who is this me?” What’s important is what I can do with this life. And I think it’s also very helpful, when you’re really stuck, to take the eight Mahayana Precepts or something really virtuous—even if it’s just the Seven-limb Prayer—something with great merit that will help you to dig your way out. You have to have faith in the processes that we’ve been taught.

VTC: Yes.  And that’s why purification and accumulation of merit are very important to do when we’re stuck—very important. Because it opens your heart, and it tunes you back into your refuge.

Audience: Often we’re so confused in that moment; this is when you should have that voice coming in your head of what your teachers have taught you, and then follow it. We’ve been taught a lot, but the mind isn’t always listening.

VTC: Or sometimes we listen and we can even say it, but we’re not doing it.

Audience: I just wanted to resonate that I feel the purification practices are so helpful. Because my self-centered mind is very articulate, intelligent, very rational thinking—like a ten page written essay—and the only way to cut through that is to do a lot of prostrations, do a lot of mantra, or something that doesn’t engage the mind in the same afflicted way. And then it can take a break from the overthinking and actually work with what’s happening on a more physical or emotional level.

VTC: To get out of our head and our nice, neat ways of describing: “Affliction number seven is related to affliction number eight”—like that. I guess it really struck me when you said before that you were quite confused and you just went and did all these prostrations to the Buddha and made lots of prayers and that way your mind became clear because you can see you’re reconnecting with your refuge. And when you make lots of aspirational prayers, you’re setting your mind in a certain direction. Aspiration does mean that you want to change. You’re asking for inspiration to help you change. But when you’re missing that aspiration, when you’re immobilized by the fear or caught in the identity or whatever it is, then like you said, you’re not sure where you’re going in your life. And water runs downhill, so we go with attachment.