When we’re young, we’re all eager beaver and excited to try to find the purpose of our life – probably, I don’t know, maybe we are, something like that! – and that usually means we try to define ourselves in terms of what I’ll become.
In my own life, first of all, as a little girl I was a Catholic, so I defined myself as Catholic, and I wanted to be a priest. Actually, I think I was so young that when everyone laughed and said I couldn’t be a priest because I wasn’t a boy, I couldn’t understand what they meant. Clearly it was my job!
Then I wanted to be a ballet dancer. Then I thought I’m going to be an actor, then I thought I’d be a writer, then I thought I’d be an artist. Finally, I thought I’d be a musician – my mother was a classical singer, she taught me, right?
Then I ran away from home when I was 19 – I fell in love with a married man and got nervous! – and eventually decided it was goodbye God, hello boys.
But I never stopped trying to find out what I wanted to be, how to define myself. I went to London when I was 23, I became a hippie, and it was such a relief: I gave up wanting to be anything. I tried consciously to throw out all these thoughts of what I should be – in other words, how to define myself.
Then a whole new phase of discovery took place – not only now in terms of how to define myself but how to understand the world, in particular who to blame for the suffering of the world. After hippie it was radical left political activity; then it was seeing things through the lens of race; then feminist. Finally, having exhausted all options of who to blame, when I was 30, 31, I bumped into these Buddhists and they told me that I should start investigating the mind – my own mind! I’d never thought of that before!
At my first teachings from Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, at that point I’d been this radical feminist activist, defining myself in terms of being a female – very strong definition. And then I heard about karma and reincarnation, and that for me was the best thing that I’d ever heard, I can’t tell you – it was like a revelation, hearing these things.
What I discovered from the lamas was that what defines us is our mind, is our consciousness, which is not physical, which goes from life to life to life, changing race, gender, even species – none of those are who we actually are. What’s the one constant? The mind, consciousness, this unbroken mental continuum, this river of mental moments.
And then I realized, well, I’m not any of those things: I’m not an actor or a writer or a musician, I’m not even female in my nature, or even human, for that matter. They are real, and we can discover ourselves via them: in this life I’ve been using my creative ability by being an editor; I’ve used that, it is my job: editor. Someone else might be a poet or a footballer. But they are not, finally, what defines us.
Our mind is what defines us – and we’re talking relatively still. And what part of our mind is who we really are? Our virtue, meaning love, compassion, wisdom, kindness, generosity, self-confidence, forgiveness, clarity – all lovely words. Conventionally they are our true nature.
Whether you end up being a toilet cleaner or a poet or the richest person on the planet, or the poorest, they are secondary, they’re not who we really are. They’re just ways we use who we are in this life, based on our tendencies, to help us grow our virtues, our wisdom. That is comfortable, it seems to me – that’s comfortable. Then you can be poor, rich, fat, thin, male, female, it doesn’t matter.
But our problem is we grab on to these labels and define our entire being in those terms. So if you’re a little gymnast and you lose your leg, you’ll kill yourself because where’s the person left if you can’t do gymnastics?
If you’ve lived for 60 years with one person and defined yourself in terms of being their partner, of course when they die, it’ll be the greatest pain you have ever known.
So, nothing wrong with being a poet, or a partner – nothing wrong, perfect. But what’s it for? To lessen your neuroses and develop your goodness. That’s it – bottom line, seems to me. Be a communist or a rich person or a poor person: same.
Yes, define yourself in terms of being a poet – and yes, even want to be a successful poet. And that means people read you, and you get paid for it, and you get accolades – nothing wrong. But its only purpose? Use it to help you become a virtuous, compassionate, content person.
Then you’ll be able to be successful without losing the plot – it’s like water off a duck’s back, you know. You don’t define yourself in terms of being successful; you don’t have attachment to being seen as a good poet. You define yourself internally, in terms of your goodness, your wisdom: you become your own person, you are content.
This is how we are on the bodhisattva path: because you want to help others, you need people to like you – wonderful, the more the better! You use whatever skill you have: one, to develop yourself, your goodness, so that, two, you can be of benefit to others. You take it all with a grain of salt. That’s what we have to learn to do, that’s the way of saying it, okay?
By defining ourselves in terms of our wisdom and virtue, which is mind, we eventually perfect it and turn it all into a buddha mind.
That’s who we really are!