The Great Secret of Mind

night and we think that we are thinking too much, the more we think like that,
the longer we lie awake! This “thinking of not thinking” itself is the gross thought
that keeps us awake. Likewise, ordinary beings are unskillful in their treatment of
suffering, and wishing to change suffering into happiness, they take to alcohol and
become mad, or perhaps commit suicide to get rid of their suffering.
In May 21, 2007, in the Nepal daily newspaper Kantipur a headline read, “After
Killing His Lover He Killed Himself.” The story went like this. Pukar and Prabina
were lovers. Pukar’s love for Prabina was so strong that he could not live without
her. They were both well educated, and Pukar had recently graduated from a
hotel-management course after studying for a year and a half in Singapore. When
he returned to Nepal, he obtained a good job in a foreign business and also a visa
for Canada. But the girl’s parents objected to her affair with Pukar, so they married
her off to a man in the nearby city of Pokhara. When Pukar heard of this marriage,
he was distraught and bewildered. He phoned Prabina and told her that since they
lacked the karma to be together, there was no point in staying friends. He wanted
his letters and gifts returned and suggested a place that they could meet—the
Salagiri forest. He had something to share with her, he said. She agreed to meet
him and keep the assignation secret. Pukar was so depressed that he got drunk
while waiting for her in the forest, and in his distress decided that if his beloved
could not belong to him that she should not belong to anyone else. When she
arrived, he took her by the neck, then shot and killed her. Then, driven by fear, he
ran some three kilometers away from that place and shot himself to death.
If we examine these lovers’ emotions carefully, we cannot find them anywhere
since they are not based anywhere in particular. Consider a dream in which your
only son suffers from sickness, receives treatment, the treatment fails, and he dies.
In this situation, immense emotional pain arises for you, the parent. If you take the
illusion of the dream as true and cling to it, you will suffer. To save yourself from
such fear and suffering, you have to know a dream as a dream or awaken from
your sleep. When you are awake, the suffering disappears from the bed. In the
same way, if you experience such suffering in love affairs, it is because you regard
illusions as truly existing.
How can there be suffering in delusion? We all feel what arises in us just now as
real suffering, and we make the same mistake in the dream. Consider Pel Dorje, a
man who lives inYangkar, which is close to my monastery. After finishing his
work one day, he returned to his house, ate dinner, and before his family had
finished their food, lay down by the hearth and slept. Suddenly he woke up,
shouted that rocks were falling, and ran outside. His father and two sisters tried to
catch him but failed, and he ran twenty feet to a fearful pit full of rocks and
nettles, and without hesitation, jumped into it. The people pulled him out still
alive. Later, when we asked him what had happened, he said that he had
mistaken his dream for waking experience. The fear and anxiety of dream can be
more intense than waking experience. Pel Dorje’s family still lives in fear that the
same thing might occur to him again. If we speak from the perspective of the
dharma, we could say that his disease is a strong attachment to dualistic
appearances—even dream appearances—as substantial and true.