[Buddha-l] no one ever gets rid of all their neuroses

[Bruce Burrill]

At 06:00 PM 1/11/2006, Richard P. Hayes wrote:
>Jack Kornfield raised many a Buddhist eyebrow when he said (agreeing
>with Jung) that no one ever gets rid of all their neuroses; at best, one
>learns to manage most of them them most of the time. I heard Buddhists
>saying that at the moment Kornfield said that, he stopped being a
>Buddhist, as if that were some kind of tragedy.

Many Buddhist -- in the West -- seem to labor under the 
illusion/delusion that awakening will bring a complete reformation of 
the person into a perfect, flawless being, and that assumption then 
allows for some "awakened" individuals whose "problems" are 
unresolved to claim that their problems as they express them are 
expressions of the awakened mind. The Geshe Michael Roach/Christie 
McNally road show seems to be the latest in a string of 
"heavy-individuals" illustrating this point.

This  letter to Geshe Michael Roach by Lama Zopa Rinpoche (Spritual 
Director of the FPMT) cracked me up. What is he telling Geshe Roach 
to do with his vajra?

== " ....If your conduct will be the way you explained in the letter 
then it will not be normal from the monasteries point of view or 
according to the monasteries point of view.

Where the need is more important than what is to abandoned (gagcha le 
skyang gopa chewa) along with that one should be able to perform 
other miracle powers, show control or freedom like Milarepa or like 
any of those yogi's such as Dukpa Kunleg , then in this way people 
can see the realizations and power and so devotion grows in them.

Even they have mistaken appearance, people see their special 
qualities of showing control and high realizations, in this way 
seeing the mistakes does not destroy peoples faith and instead they 
see only qualities.

By showing miracle powers then other people can generate devotion and 
non heresy by seeing the miracle power, something external, then they 
can have faith in high realizations seeing that you have control and 
are free and whatever conduct you do does not have the stain of samsara.

If one performs those behaviors to develop people's devotion then it 
is not just an ordinary miracle that is needed, one needs to do a 
special kind of miracle, for example the 6th Dalai Lama pee-ed from 
the top of the Potala and just before the urine hit the ground he 
drew it back again inside his vajra. Also there is the story of the 
previous incarnation of Gonsar Rinpoche he pulled in mud through his vajra.

This is just my suggestion I don't know what other Lama's and Guru's 
will advise."  ==

But outside of teachers acting badly with their vajras and yonis, 
many years ago I gave a fellow that I knew an article written by 
Kapleau Roshi concerning the quirks of personality of Zen teachers he 
knew or knew about. This was so disheartening to my friend that he 
stopped his practice, though he did stay with his psychiatrist.

I have meet meditation practitioners who felt that they could and 
should -- essentially -- turn off/cut off their emotions. They did 
not need to feel grief at the death of their mother or whomever, and 
they considered this an advanced expression of their practice, and 
nothing I could say would change their minds. I have been at this for 
close to forty years, and when my mother, who is 88, dies, I'll be a 
wreck. Why would it or should it be otherwise? But we want 
protection, shielding from the pain life gives us, and hope that our 
religion has the perfect answer, the perfect shield, and we get 
ourselves into all sorts of goofy-assed nonsense because of that.