Keep Your Eyes Peeled

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Keep Your Eyes Peeled
Lama Surya Das

• LAMA SURYA DAS ON HUMOR, CONTEMPLATIVE EDUCATION,
  TECHNOLOGY, AND THE SECRETS OF TIBETAN MINDFULNESS

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A dyed-in-the-wool East Coast guy, Lama Surya Das
Tibetan Buddhist teacher founder of the
Dzogchen Center in Cambridge, MA and author of
such bestselling books as Awakening the Buddha
Within and Buddha Standard Time will be making
the trek way out west next month for a special
mini-workshop at InsightLA in Santa Monica, CA.
The Secrets of Tibetan Mindfulness Remembering
to Remember, to be held March 17 (tickets are
still available and can be purchased here), will
explore the ways in which innate awareness offers
indispensable aids to boost enlightened living
and authenticity, freedom and well-being. In
advance of his visit, Lama Surya Das made time to
be interviewed by Danny Fisher about the program,
as well as some of the other things hes been up
to   What can you tell us about your upcoming
mini-workshop at InsightLA, The Secrets of
Tibetan Mindfulness?   Mindful awareness and
lucid presence of mind are at the heart of any
contemplative practice, especially within the
context of Buddhism. Among its many and varied
skillful means tools and techniques for the
inner science of transformative awakening and
enlightenment Tibetan Buddhism too has its
secrets and tips, based on what lamas call The
Four Close Contemplations (known in the
Theravada tradition as The Four Foundations of
Mindfulness). My Dzogchen teacher also laid out
Six Kinds of Mindfulness, based on Nagarjunas
teaching about this.
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In general there are said to be two kinds of
mindfulness, according to Buddhist pioneer Joseph
Goldstein directed and undirected. I have
gradually developed, over the years of teaching
meditation, a new schema of the Six Kinds of
Mindfulness for my students to understand and
better guide and focus their own integrated
moment-to-moment nowness-awareness practice and
meditative progress, both on and off the
cushion. In ascending order, I have noticed an
arc of deepening and sharpening development
beginning with the natural mindfulness of
interest, which stabilizes attention and on to
intentionally generated or cultivated, effortful
mindfulness then on thru intermittent
mindfulness, on to stable mindfulness, global
mindfulness, and Dharmakaya (rigpa) cosmic
mindfulness.   Your bio now notes that you have
turned your efforts toward youth and
contemplative education initiatives. Would you
say something more about this decision to focus
your efforts. Why have you made young people and
contemplative education initiatives your first
priorities? These are not necessarily my first
priories, and my mission remains the same as
always teaching and transmitting Buddhist wisdom
and practice and particularly the Dzogchen
Dharma lineage tradition to people today and
contributing to global spirituality and a saner,
safer and more beautiful and peaceful world.
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• I believe now is the time for awakening together
  a collective arising and joining and not just
  for self-help and self-growth the new
  generations are crucial for this. Moreover, its
  time for those of who are old and savvy enough to
  aspire to be service oriented leaders and
  producers rather than mere consumer to pass
  on what wisdom and experience weve gathered to
  those to follow, and co-create with them a better
  world now as well as stewarding and guarding a
  better future, include all beings and the entire
  environment.
• On the other hand, Im increasingly interested in
  furthering true Higher Education, contemplative
  education and self-realization, and co-creating a
  sacred-minded learning community among ourselves
  here in this country right now. By this kind of
  genuine Higher Ed, I mean a genuine
  wisdom-for-integrated-life-education edifying
  and instructive, including all the various kinds
  of intelligences not just I.Q. and conducive
  to producing happy people. This is how we can
  learn to live harmoniously, flourish, and find
  happiness and well being together in this
  ephemeral, gritty and marvelous world.
• What would a truly Higher Education involve
  today? What is life wisdom? What is needed and
  wanted spiritually, on all levels today outer,
  inner and subtlest, both individually and
  collectively? Any wise system of spiritual
  awakening and self-realization must, I believe,
  include practical moral and mystical elements,
  contemplation and action, emotional
  transformation and attitude refining techniques.

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Any higher wisdom training must, I believe,
include redirecting motivation mindfully
cultivating emotional intelligence utilizing
concentration, attention and present-awareness
practices and living ethically, including
altruistic compassion in action through
generosity and service. Five boosters to wisdom
development, according to transpersonal
psychologist and meditation teacher Dr. Roger
Walsh, are being in nature silence and
solitude spending time with the already wise
self-knowledge reflections on life, death and
mortality. I am wondering if you would say
something about humor and teaching Dharma. Youre
a funny guy, your emails to me in the past have
been clever and made me chuckle. In addition,
youve been on The Colbert Report twice now. How
does humor serve you in your role as a teacher?
Conversely, when is it not helpful? Religion has
become way too grim in recent centuries, and
philosophy too. I was Serious Das once, as my
girlfriend used to call me in the early
Seventies, but am much younger and lighter now.
Dont just gimme that ole time religion is
what I hear everywhere I go today (except,
notably, in the Middle East). Personally, Id
like to help transform the atmosphere of
spirituality around here, without limits.
Lightening up as well as enlightening up, and
making spirit and profound seeking and finding
more friendly, accessible and doable. A smile or
joke is the shortest distance between two people,
as has been said this is exactly why public
speakers and teachers of all kinds often start
with a joke or story, rather than with mere
seriousity. Wavy Gravy said, Life aint much
fun when we take ourselves too seriously. Steve
Colbert got it right Truthiness! I think its
time to highlight and appreciate the joy of
awakening and the buoyancy of the spiritual path
and enlightenment project, and express a Positive
Buddhism rather than such a sometimes
negative-seeming, sufferingful, dukkha-and-anatta
emptiness perspective. Any takers?
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• Im also wondering if you would say something
  about the internet and social networking. Youre
  a blogger, youre on Twitter, you write for The
  Huffington Post. Does the internet allow you to
  teach in ways you wouldnt be able to otherwise,
  or is it just simply another way of broadcasting
  teachings to a wider audience?
• Some of both, and more too. The prana is
  extremely thin in cyberspace, as John
  Perry-Barlow said in the Nineties, but I find
  that the Internet is like Indras web
  interconnecting us all, and that even mere
  virtual contact, distance learning, webinars and
  social media provides room for opening dharma
  gates for people to make contact and enter in
  more deeply, and even for personal face time. Im
  not that technical, but these various upaya
  (skilful means) and innovations, as has occurred
  throughout history, are definitely unfolding. We
  shall see how it all sorts and settles out,
  perhaps in a few hundred years.
• You and I did an interview this past summer about
  the Maha Teachers Council for The Buddhist
  Channel. This gathering was one of many that have
  taken place in the past several years. Based on
  your experiences last year, what steps do you
  think should come next? What do you think or hope
  will be discussed at the next such gathering?
• There are plenty of interesting and worthwhile
  things Id like to hear more discussion about,
  and which have been coming up over the years
  among our teacher sangha in the West and East
  too, such as the good ole koan of preservation
  and adaptation/innovation as well as some new
  things brought up by younger teachers which have
  proved meaningful, including diversity and
  related issues. We often talk about bringing
  buddhadharma into the mainstream society and
  providing tools for ordinary peoples daily lives.

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• What are the ways to encompass both the broad and
  deep dimensions of dharma teaching and practice?
  Another question Id like to and hope to hear
  more about, which came up at Garrison Institute
  in June Are we intent upon a Mindful Society, as
  Jon Kabat-Zinn tells us? Or a more awakened and
  Enlightened Society, as I like to think? A
  Peaceful Society, a Green Society, a
  Compassionate Society, a Classless Egalitarian
  Society or what?
• Who and what are and can be the sources of our
  guidance and inspiration, encouragement and
  edification, blessing and empowerment today, in
  our secular and egalitarian society? What is the
  future of Buddhism and of enlightenment in this
  tumultuous world, and what part shall we play as
  spiritual activists, leaders, altruists and
  aspiring bodhisattvas? As stewards and guardians
  of our world, the environment, and society? How
  is Buddhism meeting modernity and adapting as
  well as maintaining its liberating essence?
• How to awaken and enlighten up together, opening
  our hearts and minds while nurturing and
  nourishing body and soul, energy, spirit, and the
  collective? What are the key questions and
  candid public conversations we need to initiate
  and further facilitate about the nature of
  genuine spirituality, beyond isms and their
  schismssomething relevant to and effective for
  our time, place, and zeitgeist?
• In a post-modern world of increasingly
  exponential change, many of my co-religionists
  seem still to be struggling mightily and not
  always knowingly with the pressures from both
  within and without the fold for mere incremental
  change.

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In other words, were still caught up in
fighting the battles of the Sixties, Seventies
and Eighties with preservation and adaptation,
gender equality and gay issues, democratization
and hierarchy, commercialization, hybridization
and the global melting pot the value of new
media, social activism and engagement the
relevance of practices including monasticism,
initiations and secret teachings, esoteric
cosmology and rituals and significant resistance
to adopting modern technology all matters which
history will and has already for the most part
decided. Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh says that
eighty per cent of everything we think is wrong
I think hes being quite generous in this
assessment! As I get older I certainly am joined
by many in wishing to be there, behind the new
teachers, and to continue the genuine study and
practice of buddhadharma in our time and place as
well as a significant part of Buddhism and
enlightenment around the world. Therefore I would
like to see more of the Asian-born teachers
active in the Western countries woven into these
collegial conversations and dialogues, as they
were in the Nineties. Im also interested in
trying to help further the general group
sentiment among the 80 or so Vajrayanist and
so-called Tibetan Buddhists to have some
Vajrayana teacher conferences, to discuss various
things which arent usually included in nor
particularly relevant to the entire transectarian
teacher collective, including tulkus and lineage,
empowerments, samaya, tantra, secret teachings,
the six yogas, guru yoga, lineage authorization,
dharmapala practice, translation, and so forth.
Several of us intend to help organize such
gatherings in the near future.
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Lama Surya Das Surya.org

• Finally, you write at your website, We are all
  Buddhas by nature we only have to awaken to and
  what we truly are. In your view, whats one
  simple thing each of us can do every day to move
  closer to that?
• Keep your eyes peeled! Wake up and stay awake, by
  paying attention moment to moment. This is no
  small thing. Beware of dullness, haziness, and
  self-deception. Questioning is very helpful.
  Awakefulness is the Way. Remember to remember the
  Diamond Rule recognize the Buddhaness, the
  divine, the light in everyone and everything.