If Only I Could Stop Thinking “If Only . . . ”

We all experience these qualities already. When you saw that picture of the tennis champions your heart was no doubt moved—Sympathetic Joy for them! That’s your true nature shining through, between the clouds of ego-clinging habit. Right now we have both the sun and the clouds. The thing we have in our favor is that the clouds quickly pass by. They’re not our true nature. Our confusion about how things really are—and the habits stemming from this confusion—can be cleared away, and our essential nature will remain. New habits stemming from our essential nature can replace them. As with any habits, at first we have to focus on a new way of thinking and doing things again and again. As time goes on, the new habits take on their own momentum. Luckily, in this case they’ve got the power of our true nature behind them.

Our own innate buddha qualities, like Loving Kindness, inspire us to want to loosen our grip in order to join with everyone in these four ways, so all we have to do is enhance that natural tendency.

One obstacle to our own happiness, and to our ability to meaningfully care for others, can be a reluctance to accept circumstances, things, and people as they are. We cling not only to our illusory vision of what is “real” but to our desires to tweak the illusion a little more to our benefit, and our frustration that the world we perceive isn’t a flawless rendition of what we imagine would be perfection.

It’s a human tendency to try to make life (Samsara) comfortable. We (especially a lot of Westerners) have very high expectations for that. We want a nice house (but it always needs improving), a nice car (but maybe a newer model), a nice body (which could really use improving!), and on and on. As we go through the day, the people we encounter could use improving. We need a new, more appreciative boss. We need more friends, or the ones we have could treat us better. We need a lover, or the one we already have could use a makeover—or maybe we want a newer model there too. Though this is a universal human tendency, I think it’s become particularly prevalent in modern life among those of us with enough options to feel dissatisfied. Even if we don’t have so many options, we’re bombarded by media that shows us all the wonderful options we should probably want.

Until a century ago, humans hardly threw anything away and were more likely to stay within the communities, and in the relationships, they already had—often because they had no other choices, and because they weren’t inundated with images, products, media, and an economy that encouraged dissatisfaction with the status quo. Now, to be content with what—and who—one has seems almost unpatriotic. Nearly every TV ad (for new cars, medications, food and drink, dating sites, and bigger and brighter TVs on which to watch these same ads) relies on the assumption that what we have isn’t as good as what we could get next. As one lama, Gyatrul Rinpoche, told a friend, “Americans are masters at selling Samsara.”

I’ve often found myself stuck in the swirling eddy of “if-onlys,” as I call them. If only my sweetheart didn’t do this. If only my boss didn’t do that. If only, if only, if only...THEN I would be happy. From this expectation of life, we generate endless if-onlys, which give birth to baby if-onlys, and then those babies have babies, all of which multiply and grow. What a powerless position to be in. Not a very happy mental loop to spend my time in, I know. Yet when I was younger, I think I spent a majority of my time in some form of the if-onlys. Now I still spend time there, but a whole lot less, and it’s easier for me to notice and move out of it. It’s taken a lot of practice for me to get this far. Luckily the practice usually feels good.

Good thing Rinpoche didn’t wait for the if-onlys to come true while he was in prison.

Remember the renowned physicist, David Bohm, and his Holomovement? I talked about it in Book 1, along with his ideas about the “implicate” and “explicate” order. He saw the universe as a hologram, and it was constantly flashing back and forth between the “implicate

order” and the “explicate order”—a bit like the frames of a movie, with the dark parts in between. We see a continuity in the explicate parts—the parts with images. But that’s not how Bohm saw it...nor did the Buddha. They both used the ocean metaphor. And if we see that we’re not just wave but also ocean, we don’t have the pressure of needing those if-onlys.

And what about the “order” part of Bohm’s idea? He believed that, since the universe is a hologram, with the whole thing within each part and vice versa, then to see any part as separate and independent is wrong. And a wrong view of reality always leads to a painful collision with how reality really is. Just remember back to when you liked somebody, and thought they liked you back, and you discovered they didn’t. Ouch!

Late in his life, Bohm did an interview with Renée Weber* in which he sounded very Buddhist, despite being a Jewish physicist. At one point he described the structure of the universe in this way:

Bohm The present state of theoretical physics implies that empty space has all this energy and [that] matter is a slight increase of the energy, having some relative stability, and being manifest. Now, therefore, my suggestion is that this implicate order implies a reality immensely beyond what we call matter. Matter itself is merely a ripple in this background. Weber In this ocean of energy, you are saying.

Bohm In this ocean of energy. And the ocean of energy is not primarily in space and time at all: it’s primarily in the implicate order. Weber Which is to say unmanifest, not manifest.

Bohm Right. And it may manifest in this little bit of matter. Weber The ripple.

Bohm The ripple, you see.

* “The Enfolding-Unfolding Universe: A Conversation with David Bohm”; © 1978 by

David Bohm. This appears as Chapter 5 in the book edited by Ken Wilber:

The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes (Boston: New Science Library 1982) pp. 44–104.

Mind...blown. Bohm then goes on to apply that same hologram idea to humanity and its present, confused state. Just as we can’t see the universe as he and physicists are discovering it to be, likewise we don’t see ourselves in true relationship to humanity. Both of these misperceptions, together, are the root of our present problems. Bohm says that we can find our way out of this mess we’ve stumbled into, and it can start with one person cleaning up their act when it comes to perceiving reality.

As you or I might wonder, Weber asked him if one person could really change the consciousness of all of humanity. Bohm said that it was “damp” because of the eons of misperception, so it would take the “passion”, the “energy” of a few people seeing the same thing—true relationship of individual and whole—together. “And if ten people can have their part of consciousness all one, that is an energy which begins to spread into the whole.”

I’ve explained that Samsara, this movie we’ve made with us as the star, is flawed from the beginning. It’s a setup for su ering. I suggest that we lower our expectations of Samsara. (There’s a bumper sticker for you: Let’s lower our expectations of Samsara.) Rather than looking to Samsara to make you happy—a losing

Let’s lower our proposition—look to, and for, the path out expectations of it. If we’re having a bad dream, the sensiof Samsara. ble thing seems to be to wake up. Oddly enough, an early step along that path seems to be accepting what/who/where is happening. Not to succumb to it, necessarily, but to accept that it is happening. A big first step in Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as successful diet programs, is that newcomers accept the state they’re in, the situation that brought them to seek a way out.

The more you train your mind not to follow after every thought spawned by desire and aggression, hope and fear, the freer you are. Chasing your hopes and illusions, your fears and your aversions, in your mind or your life isn’t real freedom. It isn’t real happiness either. But how can you free yourself from want and not-want if you’re expecting happiness in this fatally flawed existence? We want what we think is in our grasp. In Samsara, true happiness is always out of reach.

The reason I’m going into all this is to get down to what many lamas have told us in various ways: the first step on the path out of Samsara is to get good and fed up with it.

Yet if we’re identified with the whole ocean, there’s nothing that we need, and no wave is a threat to us. If we’re living from the point of view of the ocean rather than protecting or indulging all the desires of this one “me” wave, we can a ord to love everyone fully.

If you love and accept everyone except so-and-so (if only they’d behave better—and by “better,” I mean “the way I want them to”), then how will you be able to open your heart and really practice Boundless Loving Kindness? Your own heart will always remain a bit smaller—a bit shriveled. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has plenty of reason to resent the Chinese, but he refuses to let any grievances or provocation tempt him to shrivel his heart. And it’s his undiminished heart that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize, and has made him one of the most beloved people on the planet. Rather than causing him any pain, his indiscriminate loving of people keeps him smiling (thus the original title of this series, Why Is the Dalai Lama Always Smiling?).

We can pursue that Boundless love in our own lives, in our own ways. Why not?

Do we have something better to do?

The reason I’m going into all this is to get down to what many lamas have told us in various ways: the first step on the path out of Samsara is to get good and fed up with it.

“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV