being touched by poignancy

Apprentice Sometimes there is something almost unbearable about it. The poignancy of human life. So many things. The sadness of hair that has been processed so much it is falling apart. Cats who have skittish personalities as a result of their experience of life and then are disliked for it by the same people who caused it in the first place. The Stilton cheese that was hated by me just for being itself. Horrible sweaters that no one is happy to bring home. Squid that seemed slimy and disgusting to me. That man you said had no friends. Lamps that don’t work anymore. Cows and children that wander around in Bodha picking at piles of garbage. Piles of garbage. The salmon mousse that killed everyone [in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life—Editor]. Soldiers that get all dressed up in their uniforms and then get shot at. Robin’s eggs that never hatch. Inadequately functioning heart valves. T-shirts that have stupid things printed on them through no fault of their own. Fruit that goes bad before anybody eats it. Highways full of holes that no one repairs. All the bugs that everybody kills. A big block of ice left out in the sun to melt. Birds that fly into windows thinking it’s the sky.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche: . . . And people who could be birds – but see the sky as a plate glass window and therefore remain caged.

Apprentice People who cannot understand what is happening to them and keep trying to.

Khandro Déchen Yes . . . and we have to live with that – being touched by its poignancy yet without getting bent out of shape by it.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche: That is the tightrope we tread as nascent changchub sempas—being touched – but not allowing ourselves the indulgence of despair. [Changchub sempa is the Tibetan for Bodhisatva. —Editor]

Apprentice Hmmm, this burst of melancholia is starting to ebb and I can feel myself trying to make it stay.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche Exactly.

Khandro Déchen And that is what we need to avoid.

Apprentice I feel so sad but there’s something enjoyable about it, though I could not really say what.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche It is byang chub sems (bodhicitta) without the dPa. The dPa in byang chub sems dPa stands for dPa bo or dPa mo—hero or heroine—and in order to authenticate our natural connectivity with primordial changchub sem we need to act, to be heroic. In this case it means to stare into the face of what is and be as we are—without indulging our feelings referentially.

Apprentice Maybe just being alive and feeling something. I am in a weird frame of mind—but it will probably pass.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche It’s like that with phenomena.

Apprentice But I feel more connected to everything and everybody than I usually do so maybe there is something good about it.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche Yes—there is. It is exceptionally good.