The Situation is Completely Hopeless

How I Ended my Chronic Anxiety and Depression with Buddhist Practice

Part 2

The most transformation teaching I received during my brief sojourn with Trungpa Rinpoche’s senior students in Western Mass was a quote from Trungpa Rinpoche. “The situation is completely hopeless.” 

My personal style of obsessive thinking was largely future focused. I had lived my life inventing one scheme after another about how to solve it. In elementary school I was deeply concerned about the environment. By high school I was marching against nuclear bombs, and had joined my first feminist group. By college I was fully radicalized, being a founding member of a feminist anti-nuke group, and things had progressed from there. My brother once commented that I came out of the womb with a protest sign in my hand.

But, what if the situation was completely hopeless? What if the suffering of human and animal life itself was not solvable. While you might think that thought would plunge me into deeper depression, it was actually a can-opener that really opened me up and allowed some sunlight in. It was common sense that this world is bound to become uninhabitable at some point. Eventually, my beloved planet earth itself will decay or burn up, as all material things do. We humans inhabiting it are hurtling toward our graves in the short-term. 

The genuine heart of sadness, Trungpa Rinpoche called it, opened in me. I breathed in the sooty suffering of all living beings and breathed out space and light. And it made me happier.

Over a year or two, I slowly healed from my nervous breakdown by doing mindfulness-awareness practice and reading and discussing Trungpa Rinpoche’s books on classical Buddhadharma in beginner-level peer groups led by those senior students. Soon, I fell in love with a new partner and moved to the San Francisco Bay area. 

Arriving in Arizona on the way to California. December 28, 1995.

One of the boons of arriving here to Oakland was that there were more than a handful of respected Tibetan lamas were in the area. I felt driven to move from Mahayana teachings into Vajrayana, and that required a teacher-student relationship with a realized meditation master. 

When I look back now on how I was then, I recall I had a lot of interest in supernatural aspects of Tibetan Buddhism such as psychic abilities, miracles, the tulku system, and so forth—things that I’m not very interested in now, twenty some years later. I remember people then talked about “mind-to-mind” transmissions from enlightened teachers, and I was sure I wanted whatever that was. Now, I’m pretty sure that concept does not relate in any way to Buddhism. I also felt that Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (such as Tara) truly existed and lived “out there”—also more reflective of other religions who worship gods and goddesses.

Rainbows, brocades, and magic are inspiring, but my opinion now is that they can’t jump you over the innermost ingrained mental habits that are so much a part of you that can’t see them. If we were born in a non-Buddhist country, in my opinion, we awoke in our brand new baby body there as a result of our bag chag gyi sgrib pa—defiled mental habits—from previous lives. The situations we meet with reflect and reinforce our karma. So, we may find ourselves surrounded by people with self-hate or low-self-esteem not often present in people raised in Mahayana Buddhist countries where everyone is known to have Buddhanature, without the slightest doubt. Our parents and teachers may also lack belief that such a thing as enlightenment exists, or a habit of respect for people who try to awaken it.

It takes time to delete this software. It takes honesty with oneself.

For me, “the situation is completely hopeless” allowed a softening to take place that allowed me to begin to stop seeing myself in a constant battle against society. A bit of compassion welled forth for all of us. I could face up to decline, as the Buddha did when he first left his palace as a young man and encountered birth, sickness, old age, and death for the first time. 

You never know… the thin veil of atmosphere that shrouds the earth could be blown away by a puff of cosmic wind. We are all fragile vulnerable creatures. Yet, we would inevitably be pointing fingers at each other as we gasped for oxygen.

“You did it.” 

“No. You did it.”

To be continued, Friday, January 13, 2016