One time, many years ago, I was looking for something to read in an airport bookstore. I picked up a book on leadership to quell the boredom on the long flight ahead of me. At the time, I was the director of a nursing home, a very stressful role.
One of the main points of leadership according to the leadership guru, was that a goal so high that it seems almost impossible will inspire people much more than aiming low.
I’m thinking about that now, as. I do notice as a Buddhist teacher that the axiom of high goals being more powerful is holding true. For example, this year I experimented with offering Buddhist group practices four or five times a month at my house. Once a month I offered an opportunity for people who had been practicing Nyingma Buddhism with our amazing lamas to come learn how to the shrine attendant for a three-hour ceremonial feast. I learned how to do this in a three-year group retreat. It is incredibly complicated and involves learning Tibetan vocabulary, memorizing the order and meaning of an opera-length text, moving gracefully in specific ways, great time pressure, and so on.
On the other days of the month, I offered an easy and beautiful one hour practice with no ritual, where people just needed to come.
You guessed it. The complicated program which adds stress and pressure to people’s participation is the one that is growing and thriving, and almost no one comes to the easy stuff.
Then, of course, we think about the vast motivation of the Bodhisattva, who vows to attain enlightenment and then return to a life of suffering in cyclic existence to guide all sentient beings (all!) to enlightenment–“emptying the pit of samsara”—as they say. You seemingly can’t get more pie-in-the-sky than that.
I am poised to launch Mayum Mountain, an organization dedicated to bringing the practice and insights of Tibetan Buddhism into Western life, as a non-profit in the coming months. Should I keep it small, just at a level to make it possible to take checks when people come to the house for programs? Or, should I create a legacy program that involves a lot of people doing big things?
I have a feeling I know which one would thrive.
Indeed. A, or prajnaparamita in 8,000 lines. Proliferation, like, rewls man.