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Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be: Lessons on Change, Loss, and Spiritual Transformation
Lama Surya Das
Broadway Books. 2003.
222 pp.US $25.00. Canada $38.00.
ISBN 0-7679-0873-2.
This book might be considered a “how to” sequel to Lama Surya Das’s celebrated “Awakening Trilogy”: Awakening the Buddha Within (1998), Awakening to the Sacred (2000), and Awakening the Buddhist Heart (2001), three books that have made this American born Lama (ordained in the Tibetan tradition of His Holiness the Dalai Lama), quite well known.
“After enlightenment, the laundry” some quote a Zen master as saying. Accordingly, Lama Surya Das’s newest book is full of masterfully told anecdotes, selected quotations, and personal remembrances and commentary about how to live life simply, realistically, in balance, and to the full-- what Surya Das himself refers to as Buddha’s own teaching of the “Middle Way” or the “Golden Mean”.
Those familiar with Lama Surya Das’s ministry know that he has striven, much like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to link the ancient wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism with the day to day questions of modern life. Surya Das’s books, like his in-person teaching, are always full of these parallels. As an American born Lama, who spent more than twenty years in the east, the lessons that fill these pages are the same ones that occurred to him while “on the path”.
He is up front from the beginning about the reasons for writing this book. “Wherever I go…people ask how I deal with fear, anger, and pain; they want advice on healing painful wounds caused by trauma and shock in their lives”, and, “too frequently, the common “advice” we hear for dealing with our feelings of grief and pain falls short of really helping” (p. xi.). In addition, Surya Das points out that much of his ministry has addressed correcting what he sees as a great misunderstanding about Buddhism. It is not, he says, a practice of “retracting and separating” but, rather, of “expansion and generous embracing and merging” (p. xiv).
Surya Das puts much of the emphasis of this book on simplicity and on emphasizing that the day-to-day lives of great spiritual teachers are not much different from those of anyone else-- full of choices, twists and turns, conundrums, sometimes unsolvable problems, and also the interplay of selfless service and self-serving ambition.
With this in mind, it is worth reviewing his Table of Contents and marking some of the human problems he chooses to address: “Loss and Change”, “Letting Go of Holding On”, “Being Heroic in the Face of Loss”, “Healing the World, Healing Ourselves”, “Healing our Wounded Hearts”, “Though Lovers be Lost, Love Shall Not”, and “Mindful and Wise”. Surya Das addresses each of these in fashion typical of his wider ministry. He asks: what are the simple day-to-day approaches that have worked for me and others? What are the lessons from many great religious teachings, when stripped of their trappings, really saying to modern day people?
Taking old teachings like “Chod”, “Hamsa”, and “the Medicine Buddha”, Surya Das explains what was behind these ancient practices, why they worked then and why they are effective today. Throughout, he uses a device familiar from his other books— enlightening his message with everyday anecdotes: “Pam’s Losses”, “Molly’s Losses”, “Sam’s Losses “ etc. (p. 48-49) -- what were their real-life problems? how did they work to solve them? These kinds of short narratives make the old wisdom in this book very accessible. Surya Das makes many other simple suggestions—how to enjoy a walk, how to enjoy looking at a flower, how to savor chewing your food. If odd-sounding at first, think of the last time you went home in the evening, put soothing music on your CD player, and then said “why don’t I do this more often?”.
Throughout his commentary, Surya Das points out that Buddhism has been a tradition informed by change. The conundrum of constant change was the very mystery the Buddha set out to unravel; and, it is the circumstance of everyone’s life:
“And change upon change…. One minute we feel on top of the world; everything is going great; and then somebody lowers the boom. Our lives change. The joy, the love, the money, the happy circumstances disappear. If we are fortunate, the losses are primarily material, but often the suffering of change is far more painful. We lose loved ones to death; meaningful relationships split up; good health vanishes; financial security and satisfying jobs are lost; children become alienated and distant. Many of the men and women on medication or visiting therapists offices are doing so because they are having reactive depressions caused by a loss or change in circumstances. This is the suffering of change”. (p. 31-32).
Surya Das responds with very simple wisdom, from the Buddha himself: “The Buddha taught that no matter where we are, or what we are doing, we are surrounded by loss and suffering. There is no escaping it. This is the bad news. The good news is that it is a universal reality; it is not your fault or your punishment. Nor will it persist forever. Remember the vital, liberating…mantra “this too shall pass”. This thought continues to free me”. (p. 33).
This is a very honest book. “Sometimes”, Lama Surya Das says “in the middle of the night, I think about the person I used to be…. Some mornings when I get out of bed, I wonder about what happened to me, the teenager who got up on early Saturday morning to read a book before running off to baseball practice…. I also remember the firm opinions I held at various times in my life. I remember when I honestly believed my entire future hinged on the outcome of a chemistry exam…. I remember when I could eat anything I wanted without gaining weight or a percentage point of cholesterol”.
Concerning these everyday puzzles, the teenager above (now the Lama of some fifty years of age), reverts to the ancient advice of the Middle Way, the balance of “Ham-so” (the “in and out”, the “up and down”) and the way of overt realism and self-honesty:
“Many of us have been conditioned to believe that another person is going to “save me”. Be honest now, don’t we all want to believe… “All I have to do is find the Prince (or Princess) Charming of my dreams, who will complete and satisfy me in every way, then my life will be perfect.” (p. 68). “If a man could have half his wishes, he could double his troubles” he then quotes Mark Twain as saying and then harkens back to the value of old wisdom: “to realize the facts of change and impermanence and get beyond attachment to the momentary ups and downs of this world. In this way we find something permanent and reliable in which to take refuge and experience inner peace”.
Readers of Lama Surya Das can be grateful that he has chosen to look at, and project, his rich, varied, and challenging life-experience through a lens that is bare, unembellished, and simple. These elements lift his writings out of the genre of just “religious teaching” and make them useful as life-therapy and uplifting camaraderie on the everyday path of life.
Kurt Johnson, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture and the National Service Conference of the AEU works in the fields of science, literature and religion. With his PhD in evolutionary biology, Kurt has published internationally concerning conservation and ecology and serves as a consultant or associate for a number of scientific institutions and conservation organizations. In literature and science he is best known for his book (with Steve Coates) Nabokov’s Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius (Zoland 1999/McGraw-Hill 2000). In spirituality, he is a co-founder of InterSpiritual Dialogue , a network for dialogue across ethical and religious traditions.
Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be: Lessons on Change, Loss, and Spiritual Transformation
Lama Surya Das
Broadway Books. 2003.
222 pp.US $25.00. Canada $38.00.
ISBN 0-7679-0873-2.
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