Disillusionment: Is There So Much Joy in Your Practice?

~In Gratitude for The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi

I want to talk to you today about a teacher’s presence. But first, let me start with a personal reflection.

I’ve been imagining so many things in my sitting practice these days. When I open my eyes, a dark rainy sky fills my window. Some days, the lightness of being from my meditation lasts all day despite the weather. Other days, I fall into the darkness and think I should wait until the sun shines the following morning. This experience, I know is our fragility. Even when we are focused and calm we can fall into the shadows. We are human, after all, and our humanness moves us through a myriad of emotions while we watch the world turn round and round. It is hard to see that what we imagine with our eyes closed may not have manifested in the world, how sometimes we fear imagination falls short. This is disillusionment. It is understanding the shadow even while we kindle a fire inside our belly. If we keep going and continue to cultivate a feeling of gratitude and dignity in the face of adversity, we may come to find a new freedom growing, a freedom from the notion that there is only suffering in the world.

I’ve been reading a lot. There is one book in particular I’d like to share with you that touches on the topic of a teacher’s presence. The book is called, Running Toward Mystery: The Adventure of an Unconventional Life by the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi. It is the beautiful tale of his life and it is filled with magic and realism—as spiritual stories tend to do. I choose authors with intention. Each voice provides me with sustenance and dignity in each phase of my journey. Appreciation fills my soul when I am transported and reminded that writing matters and sharing with others changes how we feel collectively and how we see the world.

In this book, one chapter really resonated with me because he writes about the unexpected appearance of a special teacher. The chapter is called, Is There So Much Joy in Your Religion? The chapter starts with a quote by Kabir, the Indian mystic and poet, that’s worth reading:

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
You will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian
Shrine rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in
Cathedrals:
Not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding
Around your own neck, nor in eating nothing
But vegetables.
When you really look at me, you will see me
Instantly—
You will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.

Although the author of this book is now the President and CEO of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values as MIT—this chapter is about a much earlier time in his life when “his mind had turned brittle with ritual and righteous adherence to rules, when stubborn determination had been driving his practice for a long time.” It was the time when he asked himself, What is the point of religion if it is joyless and tiring?

This deep reflection and transformational time in his early life was provoked by a Bengali swami who he had met serendipitously one night, while dancing into dawn, who asked him: Is there so much joy in your religion?

This question held so much meaning for him that he wrote about the event years later and I suspect still echoes in his everyday activities while working at MIT. For me, I’ve reframed the question to relate to my own life, my own journey as a teacher educator.

Is there so much joy in our practice?

The deeper learning that Tenzin describes in this chapter characterizes special teachers who appear in our lives with an extraordinary presence and purpose. He writes:

“Indeed, the joy of disillusionment is so profoundly connected to the human condition that it spills contagiously on anyone with whom it comes in contact. Our psychology is exquisitely sensitive to this overflowing joy. I have been blessed to meet individuals who seem to live in that state much of time, who sustain it without exhaustion, and whose joy is effervescent, radiant, and uncontainable. A few moments spent in their presence leaves an unmistakable trace. Every one of them has been a teacher. Not everyone has shared a lesson that was articulated in words, not even in a cryptic question. Sometimes the mere presence of a powerful model is all the lesson that’s needed.”

What is the lesson? The Buddhist tradition teaches us the important lesson that teaching what we need to learn at the present moment does not come to us on our terms and that patient devotion has a purpose. In other words, the joy of disillusionment is the practice of letting go of our expectations and accepting that in our practice of doing what we do with joy, despite the disillusionment, despite the adversity, despite suffering—we are cultivating extraordinary presence.

As I have done and will continue to do—I live, I read, I learn, I teach, I share. I walk through the autumn leaves. I am always learning from the Masters like Tenzin. There are too many to count! And mostly, I continue to learn from my own moments of inquietude, that I will choose to practice with joy. How extraordinary.