QUESTION
Dear Ven. Robina
May I write to you? Often I am thinking of you as my teacher and as a person who spoke to me in a personal way when we met the few times in my life, and I am very thankful for that.
I hope you are healthy and well.
Often I feel alone from the depths of my heart. I have a great longing to be in peace and in connection with others. I think about this as something karmic. My mother died when I was a young boy, and after that I felt like being thrown out of the community of humans.
But this is a construct, I know that, and I am attached to it. But I am suffering from it and often I am desperate. Today a good friend of mine told me they would no longer be my friend and said goodbye to me. Another friend behaves like I am not existing anymore. This is a pattern. In your blog, I read the deepest attachment is “not being approved of.” Yes!
Being moved by all this, I feel the need to get in touch with you, to ask you for some advice or some kind of guidance.
Apart from all this, I do my practice every day, study the Dharma and attend retreats.
Dear Robina, thank you for reading my thoughts. Thank you for teaching me and others.
From the depths of my heart,
N
ANSWER
Dearest N,
I’m very pleased to hear from you!
I hear what you are saying, and I understand.
First of all, you are really doing very beautifully with your practice, your commitment to your spiritual path. You are taking all the right steps, moving forward every day, sowing powerful virtuous seeds in your mind and purifying the negative ones. That’s practice! That’s it!
So where’s the problem? Let’s do some analysis!
This feeling you have of separateness from others: the examples you give are very clear. First, for sure, there’s the emotional hunger, the attachment to be seen and heard and approved of. We’ve all got that.
But it seems to me from the examples you give that it’s past karma as well: of doing similar things. One of the consequences of cheating on our partners in the past is that relationships don’t last, any relationships. This is yours for sure, starting with your mother.
But you understand it: a construct. It’s true. But the karma is strong.
The key thing to try to stop doing is to define yourself as therefore not worthy. That’s the cause of the suffering, not the people giving you up.
These actions of others do not define who you are in any way whatsoever. It’s just your past actions ripening.
So try to be glad that you’re purifying the past karma, which you certainly are!
And you could increase this purification by being specific in the four opponent powers practice at the end of your day. Regret very specifically the actions of harming others in this way in the past. This step, regret, purifies the karma called experiences similar to the cause — which is the exact things that are happening to you, the people giving you up. And this will purify this for the future lives as well, of course.
And the other practice, which we all forget to do, is to list yourself all your good qualities, your virtues, how hard you’re practicing — say them out loud. The lamas, of course, call this “rejoicing” — we never do it! We focus only on the bad, what’s missing, what we’re not doing properly. This is the irony of ego.
We really need to do this practice. So at the end of the day, after your purification practice, do the rejoicing.
So, dear N, what do you think?
Much love — and much rejoicing!
Robina
QUESTION
Thank you very much for your reply. Your words did me good and touched me. I felt seen and answered by you. It gives me courage. That makes me very happy. Just writing to you has given me a perspective to look forward and to take care of practice in everyday life, to take care to be helpful and supportive to others and to become aware of my negative thoughts.
This is not easy. I do the purification practice and am thinking about karma. The thing about worth is true, not to define myself as not worthy, that this is the suffering, not the people giving me up. That is a really important point: I create suffering myself. I would like to penetrate this point more and understand it in depth. It’s something I’ve been working on for a long time and I keep coming back to it.
I am very grateful to you, Robina.
With good wishes,
N
ANSWER
Dearest N,
Well, reading your words it’s clear to me that you are on track: you are doing all the right things, taking the right steps, thinking the right way, doing the right things.
Perfect!
So, just keep going, keep moving one step at a time, remembering that you’re a work in progress, that every thought, word and action counts, brings results.
I rejoice, N!
Many blessings to you,
Robina