“Then you must choose to overcome. What happens if you keep giving in to a weak mind? You feed weakness. The result is an even weaker mind in the future. Instead, you must cultivate confidence!” Geshe Wangpo sat erect in his chair and clenched his fist on the table. Power seemed to emanate from him in all directions.
“You think I can?”
“You must!” the lama told him forcefully. “When you talk to people, you must speak to them with big eyes and a strong voice.”
Sam was shifting to a straighter posture in his chair.
“You have read A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life?”
Sam was nodding.
“It says self-confidence should be applied to wholesome actions. That is what you would do here, yes—wholesome actions? You must decide ‘I alone shall do it.’ This is the self-confidence of action.”
“Big eyes and a strong voice?” Sam asked, noticeably louder.
The lama nodded. “Like this.”
In response to Geshe Wangpo’s power, a new feeling seemed to be coming over Sam. He was sitting more upright. Holding himself more assertively. Instead of staring downward, he looked directly into Geshe Wangpo’s eyes. Nothing was being said out loud, but in the silence a different, more intuitive form of communication seemed to be occurring. As though Sam were realizing that all his self-esteem issues were nothing more than ideas he had about himself, ideas that had all the substance of tissue paper. Ideas that were temporary and, like any other, would arise, abide, and pass. Ideas that, in the presence of this monk, were being replaced by different, more life-affirming ones.
He spoke after the longest while. “I don’t know your name,” he said.
“Geshe Acharya Trijang Wangpo.”
“Not the author of Path to the Union of No More Learning, translated by Stephanie Spinster?”
The lama sat back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest, and threw Sam a look of glowering challenge. “You know plenty,” he said.
As I padded back to Jokhang later that day, I was lost in my own thoughts about what Geshe Wangpo had said. I’d been as startled as Sam to hear that a lack of self-confidence was considered, in Buddhism, to be a form of laziness, a weak mind that had to be overcome. I couldn’t avoid remembering my own feelings of inadequacy when it came to Dharma practice in general and meditation in particular. And how, living at Jokhang and being frequently reminded of the transcendent realizations that were possible, my own meditation practice was so limited that it seemed hardly worth continuing.
But as Franc’s lama had said, what would happen if I kept giving in to a weak mind? What result could there possibly be except future weakness? There was an unavoidable, if disconcerting logic, but along with it, a strangely compelling feeling of empowerment.
That evening, as I took up my meditation position on the windowsill, my paws neatly tucked beneath me, eyes half-closed and whiskers alert, before I focused on my breathing, I recalled Geshe Wangpo’s words.
I reminded myself that I lived with the perfect role model, that I was surrounded by those who supported my practice. There were no better circumstances than mine in which to evolve into a true bodhicatva.
I alone must do this!
Did I arise from that meditation session as a fully enlightened being? Was my change of attitude the cause of instant nirvana? Dear reader, I would be lying if I told you so. My meditation showed no sign of instant improvement, but perhaps more importantly, my feelings about it did.
Starting then, I decided that I wasn’t going to think of every bad session as a reason to give up. I wouldn’t judge my own experience according to the Olympian heights achieved by His Holiness’s visitors. I was HHC, with my own failings and weaknesses, but, like Sam, my own strengths, too. I would meditate, metaphorically speaking, with big eyes and a strong voice. I might not have all the instructions about meditative concentration down pat, but I knew plenty.
There is a postscript to this story, dear reader. Of course there is—that’s the best bit, don’t you think? The unexpected bonbon. The balletic pirouette. When it comes to sudden shifts in gear, I am that kind of cat.
This is just such a book.
And, having come this far with me, like it or not, my friend, you are most certainly that type of reader!
First, a confession.
I had been unsettled the day I had listened to Sam’s spiraling self-doubt, as he explained his feelings of inadequacy to Franc. How being laid off from the bookstore had underlined the rejection he had felt at being the last boy standing at sports-team selections. How his failure to find love at college only reinforced the saga of a woeful misfit. The fact that many highly capable professionals had no sporting prowess, or that some of the most gorgeous women happily partnered with the geekiest of men, somehow didn’t deflect his self-destructive b
eliefs. Considering how intelligent he was, his explanation was bizarre and would even have been laughable were it not for the pain it so obviously caused him.
And yet when I had listened to how he combined an assortment of disconnected experiences to produce an elaborately depressing narrative about himself, I couldn’t avoid a painful recognition: I was just like that.
Didn’t I allow one negative thought to spark off a quite unrelated one? No sooner was I reflecting on my poor meditation skills than I would turn to my lack of discipline at the food bowl. Contemplating my physical form, I’d dwell on the absurd way I walked because of the injury to my legs. Which led, with depressing inevitability, to my earliest memories and the matter of my pedigree.
After the jolt delivered by Geshe Wangpo, I came to discover the opposite dynamic: that positive thoughts also multiply—and produce the most unexpectedly wonderful effects.