Part 1: My Journey of Spiritual Cultivation [Ep. 5]

II. The Journey of Spiritual Cultivation

Deepening Practice and Household Tensions (2of2) — The Limit of Endurance

My cultivation remained diligent, yet my emotions were in terrible disarray, my inner balance often shattered. Sometimes I looked at the dear child, looked at this home, and thought: maybe I should just abandon the practice. Why lose everything I have for this? My reverence for the Master remained, but the deep attachment I once felt had receded. The Master’s care for me was unchanged. He didn’t lecture me on grand principles — sometimes he would suggest I go out and buy myself a new outfit to lift my spirits. He said: during this period, whatever method can help you maintain inner balance is the best dharma door of all.

Through all of this, despite having the Master, I would rise from sitting in confusion, uncertainty, hurt, exhaustion, and loss. I began repeatedly re-examining myself, asking why I was practicing, what I actually wanted. I could see my own hidden desires and habitual tendencies more clearly than ever — I was no different from anyone else, and the more I practiced, the more it seemed I was going backward.

I felt I had no wisdom at all, not even the ordinary cleverness I once had. I drifted in a fog, increasingly without direction in life, not knowing what I was doing each day or what awaited me in the future. Becoming a Buddha was only a vague concept to me. What is a Buddha? The more I thought about it, the more confused I became. I simply listened each day to what the Master said and did exactly as he instructed. My mind held no thoughts of my own. I felt stupid and slow. Yet I never wavered in my trust in and respect for the Master — not once did I doubt him. During that period all the Master’s guidance was simply to help me maintain inner equilibrium, and beyond that, to keep the precept of patient endurance.

Keeping precepts, I realized, is truly painful. Keeping silent outwardly is possible, but not allowing even a flicker of resentment to arise inwardly is extraordinarily difficult. Still I tried with everything I had. I believed that if I could do it once, I could do it twice. This insight came from my very first days of sitting: whenever I could enter samadhi, it felt wonderful.

Gradually I realized that being able to enter samadhi so easily right from the start had depended entirely on the Master’s blessing and support — and also on the completely relaxed state of mind I had then, free of any conceptual barriers. Later, once I began treating sitting seriously as a formal undertaking, I couldn’t settle into it. More and more undirected thoughts arose. After only about forty minutes of sitting — always half-lotus — both legs would start to ache. The Master told me not to come down, to endure it second by second. He stood by me, constantly encouraging me: one more second, one more second. The pain gradually moved from my ankles to my hips and cycled between those two places. Sometimes the sweat poured from my brow. And then — the pain vanished in an instant. A wave of ease flooded both legs and the whole body. The Master said: bear it through a few times like this and it won’t hurt anymore — though there may sometimes be numbness. I applied this approach to keeping precepts. Each time I felt on the verge of anger, I told myself: wait, just one more second.

But if we lack the wisdom to see through the true nature of a situation and ultimately dissolve it through understanding, endurance alone is only temporary. And human endurance has a limit. Suppress long enough, and everything breaks loose at once — like shaking a bunch of grapes, you suddenly remember every single thing you have been enduring, all at once, settling every account in one go.

That’s exactly what happened to me. When my temper finally exploded, it was like madness. I threw all the Master’s teachings out of my mind, and even my parents’ years of instruction were forgotten. I shouted words I am ashamed of, and I smashed some things in the house. My husband looked on with barely concealed contempt. When that storm had passed, I sat quietly, reduced myself to nothing in my own estimation, unable to face the Master again. He did not rebuke me. He only comforted me and said: “What is past — don’t think about it anymore. What’s been done wrongly is done. If you keep carrying it, isn’t that adding error upon error? Child, the energy within you is very strong. Your energy channels have already begun to transform through your cultivation, and you are not yet able to govern your own arising thoughts and intentions — this is dangerous. From now on, you need to set aside some time each year to leave the world behind, go into the mountains, and devote yourself to intensive cultivation, to complete the transformation of the energy channels. I will tell you the specific time and place when the moment comes.”