Translator: Jane Woon Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Hello.
It's so exciting to be here,
and I have been struck
by each of the speakers who have come before me,
how beautifully they have worked -
in their own way -
the good, the bad and the ugly of their lives
to create their own unique destiny,
which I'm sure is something we all would like to do ourselves.
Personally, I have no idea how I became a Buddhist teacher.
There is nothing in my Judeo-Christian background
that really could have predicted it.
And "Buddhist teacher" sounds so learned and serious,
and I was a terrible student.
I barely graduated high school;
I didn't go to college.
Instead, I just started working.
I was a waitress many, many times.
I was a taxi driver in Boston, Massachusetts -
not a friendly place to drive a car, by the way -
and I was a bartender at a blues club in Austin, Texas.
That was a good job.
Probably the best job I ever had.
But probably like many of you either have or now,
I was wandering in like this state of confusion:
Who am I?
Who am I supposed to be?
And somewhere in here,
I thought it'd probably be a good idea if I learned how to meditate.
But this was like 1993,
so that was kind of a kooky thing to do at that point,
but luckily for me, I met someone who I really wanted to teach me.
And I wanted him to teach me because he had been taught
by the Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa,
and I had read some books by Chögyam Trungpa,
and I really, really liked that guy,
so I was like, yes, I would like him to teach me.
So I went to his house.
He said, "We're going to sit.
But here are the basics.
I'll explain it in greater detail when we sit down.
But basically, you place attention on your breath,
breath,
breath.
You allow your thoughts to be exactly as they are.
We don't try to clear the mind of thought or stop thinking,
because that's kind of ridiculous.
And we don't try to think happy thoughts,
because that's only slightly less ridiculous.
You just let your thoughts be as they are.
And when you become distracted, and you notice that,
you let go and come back to the breath.
And since this is your very first time meditating,
let's sit for ...
one hour."
And I said, "One hour?
I can't sit there doing nothing for one hour."
He was like, "Really?
Okay, 45 minutes.
And it's not exactly doing nothing."
So we sat, and he gave me wonderful instruction.
Then he said, "If you want to continue your practice when you go home,
here's some suggestions for setting up your own practice."
And I took those suggestions.
And I made meditation a part of my life.
And I started to notice, pretty quickly, that things were changing.
I wasn't becoming all zen or peaceful or anything like that -
still to this day, that is true -
but my mind was becoming sharper.
My heart was becoming softer.
And I started to notice the magic of this world.
Not the like woowoo wizard magic,
but like, "Look at that friggin' tree.
And look at how graceful the branches are.
And that color blue you're wearing, it's freaking me out;
it is so intense and beautiful.
And the way those two people just looked at each other."
And it broke my heart.
I was just seeing and feeling so much.
So I kept meditating,
and I didn't go on retreats, I didn't take classes,
I didn't join a community.
It just was something very personal that I did on my own for like 10 years,
just in my house.
And then I had the amazingly good,
and horrifyingly terrible,
good fortune
of sort of stumbling into a massive professional success.
A book I happened to write
about asking questions before you get married
started to sell like hotcakes,
and I became a New York Times bestselling author,
and I'm not being disingenuous when I say it totally came out of the blue.
Hundreds of thousands of copies, Oprah show, the whole works.
And then to complicate matters further,
a publisher came out of the woodwork and was like, "Here's a lot of money.
I'd like you to write another book."
And then another publisher said, "I'll top that offer. Here's more money."
And there was a bidding war,
and then I started to get very scared.
Because what if the next book I wrote tanked?
Or what if I started to find
another relationships person was becoming more popular than me?
And People magazine started calling me,
asking me to comment on like celebrity breakups and stuff,
and quoting me as a relationships expert.
And the only person in the world
who laughed louder than me when I told him about this
was, of course, my own personal husband
(Laughter)
who knew how dorky and awkward I was in relationships.
But the biggest danger
was that I might actually start to believe that I was a relationships expert
or some such nonsense.
So I realized at that point
what I needed to do more than anything was deepen my practice,
remember what was really important.
So I went on a month-long retreat, and it was awesome,
and I started studying and taking classes,
and then the next year, I went on a two-month retreat.
Then I went to a Buddhist seminary in my lineage, the Shambhala tradition,
and made a connection to my own teacher,
Sakyong Mipham.
It was only at this point, after this point -
15 years of practice and retreats and seminaries and schwemenaries -
was I deemed eligible to become a meditation instructor,
which I really wanted to do
because I saw that no matter how much we are taught in this world,
no one actually teaches us how our minds work,
how to work with our own minds,
what makes our minds sharper,
what makes our hearts softer,
what creates the connection to our own personal magic.
So I enrolled in this course of study to become a meditation instructor.
There were about 40 of us.
And at the end of the program, 39 people had passed,
and one person had flunked.
And that was me.
(Laughter)
Because I told you I'm not very good at school.
But luckily for me,
the teachers of that program were like, "We see something in you, kid.
Do six months, you know, remedial work,
and then if you do that well, we'll make you a meditation teacher."
And I did, and they did.
And then I started to teach retreats.
And at the end of every retreat, I'd say,
"If you want to practice when you go home,
I believe that what you will notice
is that your mind will become sharper,
your heart will become softer
and you will connect to the magic of your path.
And therefore it's very important to find a meditation teacher.
Just someone who's practiced for longer than you
that you can talk to and parse this experience with."
But almost everybody was like,
"I don't know how to find a meditation teacher."
So I started making a 10-minute guided video
that I just sent out as a way of supporting people,
and it was preceded by a very short talk, couple of minutes,
on something connected to this sharpness, softness and magic of the practice.
And that was in 2011,
and now, as was mentioned, the Open Heart Project
has close to 20,000 people all over the world
who get meditation instruction from me, I suppose.
And they report -
no matter where they live, how old they are, big, small, old, young -
their minds become sharper,
their hearts become softer
and they discover magic.
How could it possibly be
that sitting there doing nothing causes these profound qualities to arise?
The answer is contained in the instruction itself.
There are three qualities.
The first, you place attention on breath,
breath.
Everything that is not breath,
all your thoughts, your ideas, your notions -
the brilliant ones, the violent ones, the horrible ones, the boring ones -
not the point.
So we cultivate this quality called precision, one-pointedness.
We find that we can be very crisp in the way we hold our minds;
we become able to focus.
And in this increasingly nutty world, that's increasingly difficult to do.
But if you - this is a room full of people who want to create sustainability,
which I honor you for.
And the first thing I think that we all need to be able to sustain
is our own attention.
So the second quality is called openness.
And it comes from the part of the instruction that says,
"Allow your thoughts to be as they are."
From this, we rouse the quality of gentleness toward ourselves.
We are usually not gentle towards ourselves.
From this quality of gentleness, we soften.
And because of the way we're built as humans,
the next thing that immediately happens is we soften to others:
we discover the truth of compassion.
And sort of referring back to something Christo said,
focus without compassion is very clinical,
and compassion without focus is just kind of wishy-washy,
so very important to bring them both in together.
And the third quality comes from the third part of the instruction,
which is when you notice that you become distracted, let go.
This is the secret sauce.
You see, as you practice - the truth
I'm going to lay it on you right now -
there is nothing to hold onto.
There is no thought, no body, no idea, no building,
no entity of any kind
that does not arise, abide and dissolve.
So no matter how great your thought or horrible your mood,
it always goes away.
And there is actually nothing to hold onto.
This can be quite terrifying,
but it is also awesome.
Because you, in addition to being a room full of people
who want to create sustainability,
you want to be innovative.
Innovation itself is a kind of magic.
You see something, you make something, you understand something
that wasn't there before.
Poof. Now it is.
Where does innovation come from?
It doesn't come from conventional thought.
The field of innovation is always just beyond conventional thought,
so we have to be brave
and let go of the armor of our opinions and ideas and so on.
As I say, scary.
But you can do it.
While it is very disorienting,
and we have to live with the truth that there is nothing to hold onto,
here's the advice that helps me when I find that the most terrifying.
It was something said
by the aforementioned Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
He said, the truth - that's my words - the truth, quote,
"The bad news is you're falling through the air.
Nothing to hold onto.
No parachute.
The good news is there is no ground,
so you can relax."
I encourage anyone who feels so inspired
to learn to meditate if you think that it might be good for you -
it's not for everyone, but if you would like -
and know that as your practice progresses,
you will absolutely - I feel quite confident in saying
that your mind will become sharper,
your heart will become softer
and the magic of your unique world, your path, your destiny
will become more apparent to you.
At the same time,
you will just be sitting there, doing nothing.
Thank you.
(Applause)