I’m reading again from Sherry Marshall’s Devotion, a beautiful collection of stories about westerners who have become senior students of some of Tibet’s most famous teachers. I pulled it out because I remembered that one of those students is in London, where I hope to look him up later this year.
This from the opening of his chapter of the book…
A meditator undertaking a retreat was endeavoring to realize the nature of emptiness. He was attepting a practice to conquer the projections of his mind, in the form of demons. One night in the dark, he returned to his hut, not knowing that his sister had visited and left him a jug of yoghurt. He mistakenly thought he saw, by the faint glow of a butter lamp, the large eye of a demon, which of course was merely the top of the yoghurt pot. Deciding not to be afraid, demon or not, and convincing himself that demons were only in the mind, he yelled and hit the demon. The yoghurt spilt everywhere and suddenly, in the dim light, he thought that there were now many demons staring at him with their white eyes.
Determined to overcome his terror at the thought of numerous demons waiting to attack him, he kept hitting them all with his shawl but they kept multiplying. Suddenly, cutting through everything, as his meditation practice had taught him, he realised he had yoghurt on this hands and stopped and laughed. There were no demons to destroy and the whole episode had been created by his overactive mind and foolishness.
–Adapted from “The Evil Eye,” in Surya Das, The Snow Lion’s Turquoise Mane: Wisdom Tales from Tibet.
It seems that the trick for getting through Nepal in October, and then on to London for six months starting in November, will be resisting the urge to flail around in the yoghurt!