Have you ever considered confusion to be a form of protection? Yeah, me neither. But that’s exactly what the fourteenth lojong slogan suggests:
Seeing confusion as the four kayas is unsurpassable shunyata protection.
And listen, I know what you’re thinking. It is the first week of the new year and this slogan sounds complicated, confusing, and hard. I feel the same way! Not enough tea on my Monday morning to wrap my head around this one. Which is funny, because the point of the slogan is to embrace confusion.
Pema Chodron describes the four kayas so clearly:
- Your thoughts have no birthplace, they just pop up out of nowhere.
- Thoughts are nevertheless unceasing.
- They appear but are not solid.
- Putting this all together, there’s no birth, no dwelling, no cessation.
In other words, she concludes, what we really have is shunyata, complete openness. Now, what does this have to do with mind training? Well, it’s asking us to look underneath all of that activity and recognize that really, what’s going on is just a lot of change. A lot of coming and going. Like noise, it’s here one minute and could be gone the next.
When we see behind the curtain of our minds in this way, we just don’t get so worked up about any of it any longer. We become more open, which is the gift of shunyata. And that openness offers us protection.
Now, the protection part is tricky, because really, what happens is that we realize we don’t have all that much to protect. What, are we going to go to battle over this fleeting thought?! This one passing feeling?! Seems ridiculous and unnecessary. So we lay down our arms, so to speak. We walk through the world unarmed but protected by an inner confidence that is simply open to the world as it is.
The best way to peek behind the curtain is to meditate regularly. Sitting on our cushions helps us realize the fleeting nature of our mind games. It allows us the opportunity to see the confusion for what it really is, and return to openness.
How can you be open to the world as it is today?
