Start Where You Are

Let the World Speak for Itself
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vipashyana and tonglen—are meant to support a
softer, more gentle approach to the whole show, the
whole catastrophe. We begin to let opposites coexist,
not trying to get rid of anything but just training and
opening our eyes, ears, nostrils, taste buds, hearts,
and minds wider and wider, nurturing the habit of
opening to whatever is occurring, including our shut-
ting down.
We generally interpret the world so heavily in
terms of good and bad, happy and sad, nice and not
nice that the world doesn’t get a chance to speak for
itself. When we say, “Be a child of illusion,” we’re be-
ginning to get at this fresh way of looking when we’re
not caught in our hope and fear. We become mindful,
awake, and gentle with our hope and fear. We see
them clearly with less bias, less judgment, less sense
of a heavy trip. When this happens, the world will
speak for itself.
I heard a story about Trungpa Rinpoche sitting in a
garden with His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
People were standing around at a distance, close
enough to hear but far enough away to give them pri-
vacy and space. It was a beautiful day. These two gen-
tlemen had been sitting in the garden for a long time,
just sitting there not saying anything. Time went on,
and they just sat in the garden not saying anything
and seeming to enjoy it very much. Then Trungpa
Rinpoche broke the silence and began to laugh. He
said to Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, pointing across the
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lawn, “They call that a tree.” Whereupon Khyentse
Rinpoche started to laugh too. Had we been there, I
think we might have had a little transmission of what
it means to be a child of illusion.
We can practice this way in our postmeditation
now and for the rest of our lives. Whatever we’re
doing, whether we’re having tea or working, we could
do that completely. We could be wherever we are
completely, 100 percent.
Take the whole teatime just to drink your tea. I
started doing this in airports. Instead of reading, I sit
there and look at everything, and appreciate it. Even
if you don’t feel appreciation, just look. Feel what you
feel; take an interest and be curious. Write less; don’t
try to capture it all on paper. Sometimes writing, in-
stead of being a fresh take, is like trying to catch
something and nail it down. This capturing blinds us
and there’s no fresh outlook, no wide-open eyes, no
curiosity. When we are not trying to capture anything
we become like a child of illusion.
In the morning you feel one way; in the afternoon,
it can seem as if years have passed. It’s just astound-
ing how it all just keeps moving on. When you write a
letter, you say, “I’m feeling crummy.” But by the time
the person gets the letter, it’s all changed. Have you
ever gotten back an answer to your letter and then
thought, “What are they talking about?” You don’t re-
member this long-forgotten identity you sent out in
the mail.
Let the World Speak for Itself
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There was a Native American man called Ishi,
which in his language meant “person” or “human
being.” He was a good example of what it means to be
a child of illusion. Ishi lived in northern California at
the beginning of the century. Everyone in his whole
tribe had been methodically killed, hunted down like
coyotes and wolves. Ishi was the only one left. He
had lived alone for a long time. No one knew exactly
why, but one day he just appeared in Oroville, Cali-
fornia, at dawn. There stood this naked man. They
quickly put some clothes on him and put him in jail,
until the Bureau of Indian Affairs told them what to
do with him. It was front-page news in the San Fran-
cisco newspapers, where an anthropologist named
Alfred Kroeber read the story.
Here was an anthropologist’s dream come true.
This native person had been living in the wilds all his
life and could reveal his tribe’s way of life. Ishi was
brought on the train down to San Francisco into a to-
tally unknown world, where he lived—pretty happily,
it appears—for the rest of his life. Ishi seemed to be
fully awake. He was completely at home with himself
and the world, even when it changed so dramatically
almost overnight.
For instance, when they took him to San Fran-
cisco, he happily wore the suit and tie they gave him,
but he carried the shoes in his hand, because he still
wanted to feel the earth with his feet. He had been
living as a caveman might, always having to remain
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hidden for fear of being killed. But very soon after he
arrived in the city they took him to a formal dinner