The Locus of Control and the Buddhist Version of Being a Lamp Unto Yourself
(00:03):
Greetings. Dear friends, this is Dawn Boiani Sandberg, and I am recording from my mountain house here in Crestone, Colorado. And there are a few different points of reflection that I came to this weekend. And it has to do with something called the locus of control. And what does that mean? It’s kind of like the Buddhist version of be a lamp unto yourself. And it has to do with a theory that when we’re small, we grow up and we have our parents sort of tell us how to live and what our values are and what our culture is, and we’re learning from teachers. So the mind is kind of looking outward to define itself. And we’re given cultural cues, we’re given language, we’re raised in how to grow up. And at a certain point, though, the mind can turn inward and develop its own sense of autonomy and wisdom and sovereignty.
Turning Inward and Developing Inner Knowing
(01:11):
And that’s a really important developmental process where you’re not kind of looking outward all the time. I mean, in Buddhism, we talk about the cause of suffering is desire. So if the mind, or we also talk in the higher tantras about the mind looking outside. So if we’re always looking outside for something to define us, for our self-worth. Currently, we’re using social media like, oh, I have to post something and then everyone likes it. And then I use that as these influencers as a metric of my self-worth and my value. So the mind is always looking outside, still kind of in a childlike sort of infantile state of like powerlessness and weakness and not knowing. And when the mind pivots inward, and this is a marked important developmental metric, is when the mind comes inward and says, “I’ve grown up. I will look inside for my own truth and self-knowing that all the truths of the universe, all the Dharma practices, all the wisdom, the gnosis, that sort of esoteric understanding can come from looking within.”
(02:32):
I know my values, my morals. I know what’s harm, what’s not harm. I know how to shine a light to my path in this life.” And I feel that me as a Buddhist, that’s been a huge impetus for me to become a Buddhist because I grew up as an old deadhead. And when you were in that Grateful Dead sort of dancing scene and sort of psychedelics and stuff, I mean, you kind of become privy to this sort of magical matrix. And that’s what inspired me to become a Buddhist. It was never about a cult of personality or following one particular teacher, although I do have a few trusted, very, very kind, not commanding teachers that I treasure as a Buddhist. So I’m not anti-opposed to having a guru or a llama or a mentor, but those relationships were mostly eye level. They weren’t like top-down command and control.
Spiritual Teachers and the Turn Toward Doctrine
(03:30):
And I never felt oppressed or trapped or owned by any of my spiritual teachers. So my whole impetus for becoming a Buddhist was always this introspective process of like, wow, what’s inside of us? There must be something kind of there beyond the veil that I think we can develop our conscious contact with and evolve spiritually. And I found Buddhism as a way to offer a lot of methods to do that. But the problem is, and this is what I keep talking about in a lot of my blogs and my sound, and people regard me as a vow breaker or heretic, but I don’t think that I am at all. I feel that the original instruction from the Buddha was, from what I understand, and a lot of this is all hearsay because nothing was written down for the first 300 years, but that we were not supposed to make any images of him or write anything down.
(04:23):
So our current understanding of what the Buddha looked like or what he said or any of the doctrine came from an oral lineage, which was supposed to be pretty good. But a lot of these sutras and tantras, they’re written kind of afterwards. And I just feel that his whole process of going inward and sitting under the tree and kind of cutting all of the Vedic paths and all of the doctrine and anything in the world, he actually cut all that off and said, “I’m just going to take time and go really far inward until something happens.” So I think that’s why he didn’t want us to make statues and turn it into idolatry because he’s, “I know what you guys are going to do. You’re going to make a big religion of me. And then you’re going to objectify. You’re going to be looking outside yourself for doctrine, for worship, for guru devotion.
(05:20):
And the mind will be kind of always grasping.” So how can we liberate and find the ground of gnosis and inner knowing if the mind’s always still looking outside? You’re looking in the wrong place. The instruction always has been from the first noble truth up to the highest, most esoteric teachings of Togyal. The mind has to look down at the ground. That’s always the instruction. So what are we doing? Sometimes I feel that we’ve really taken a wrong path with all of this conceptual doctrine because it doesn’t even help.
Buddhist studies was my minor, and I’ve read so much doctrine that, I mean, all the three yanas, all of the commentaries have just taken on so much, but it really hasn’t caused a personality change or internal spiritual development. It just stays in the mind. And then what I noticed when you become like a Dharma scholar, and especially if you’ve done Three Year Retreat, a lot of people will kind of use that as credential and then think that they’re much more evolved than everyone and kind of hobnob with the evolved people.
Dharma Pride, Hierarchy, and Unkindness
(06:33):
And then it becomes really ugly, like Dharma pride, know-it-alls, people that just espouse doctrine on social media and think they’re really holy and venerable and Lamas, but they fundamentally are unkind. They just don’t have that kind of warmth of the heart. Like one of the people I’m thinking of, I invited her for tea and she couldn’t even be bothered to respond to me with the level of etiquette that you would expect from someone at a gas station. Just ghosting me. I don’t have any real credential. I’m not a super holy accomplished person with any title that calls myself “Venerable or Lama (Guru).” I’m just kind of like a Ronan practitioner person that has no real glory to me. And I like it that way. I don’t want to be glorified because then I think there’s a certain kind of arrogance and pride that our involvement with the Dharma can create credential and people will think that they’re more spiritual or more involved.
(07:41):
And then we get into this hierarchy. And then how that translates is actually unkindness, pride, arrogance, and condescension. And so gosh, that’s why I’m thinking like the locus of control, pivoting out from using the Dharma as a huge giant life waste of distraction, concept, doctrine, volumes and volumes of sutras and tantras, just consuming all of that. Then kind of going and telling everyone that you’re some super high spiritual person because you have this Dharma knowledge.
What are we doing? These gold gilded idolatries. And then Lama-ism. Lamaism can be cool because I have, again, eye-level yogi teachers that taught me one-on-one and were extremely powerful and extremely compassionate. So I’m all about devoting to a Lama and kind of learning from someone that’s more evolved, but not in a way that the Buddha talked about where it’s creating a religion and creating idolatry and the mind looking outside for something to provide meaning or even blessings, even just kind of receiving blessings all the time.
Looking Inward Rather Than Looking for Salvation Outside
(09:00):
You can do that and you kind of feel good for a while. But then after an empowerment or some spiritual shaktipat, it will fade. So those qualities have never been uncovered within us. So there’s only one path for that real development to happen, and that’s to go inward. And that going inward is finding what I think the Buddha had reportedly talked about is finding that sort of brightness, that lamp, the island within ourselves. Be an island unto yourself, or the translation is lamp or island. We’re not sure. But whatever it is, the process is deep inner knowing that it’s not about doctrine. It’s not about social hobnobbing with the cool Lamas and wearing brocade and wearing robes and thinking we’re super special~ because that’s arrogance and that actually harms the world. I know a lot of these forums, these sort of Dharma scholars come in and people are scared and they’re looking for the locus of control is outside and they’re looking for doctrine and understanding.
(10:08):
And these scholars will come in and say the most vicious, hell-infused, frightening, not liberating stuff. And then they put a little feather in their cap and they think they’re super smart because they quoted some sutra, but they’re just jerks. They’re hurting people. So I go onto these forums and I say something like one guy was afraid of going to Vajra hell because he took an empowerment on Zoom and he was afraid to leave because he would break his tantric commitments and he didn’t want to stay in the tradition. And everyone was just espousing this. He was going to go to hell and break his commitments. And the doctrine is very clear of where you should be. And I write like, “Hey buddy,” kind of postmodern, open and loving. “You’re going to be okay. Just follow your heart. Follow your own light and find that within us.
Finding the Inner Locus of Control
(10:59):
That is the only way. And sometimes we might even have to kind of cut all of our identity and our connection with all of this Lamaism and titles and doctrine and just stop everything and then turn the mind in a simple way, let it all go and find that locus of control. There’s an inner knowing about the path forward, about how we can be of benefit, about connection with vast sacredness, that magic in our lives. So I feel that the invitation, and a lot of people who’ve over the Dharma scandals over the past couple of years with the Me Too movement, a lot of my friends have actually left the Dharma. But I would think letting all of the corruption and scandals and command and control and unkind things define us. My husband said, “Well, now that your community has fallen, now you can really become a Buddhist.” And what did he mean by that?
(11:57):
He said, “Now you can actually not be involved with all of the social distractions and doctrinal distractions and command and control and community volunteering and all this stuff that I was doing administratively.” And he said, “Now you can go deep. Now you can really find the answers within you.” And so this is not pride. This is not like Rudrahood, like I’m going to make up the Dharma myself. No, this is the invitation that the only way that you’re going to make progress is that internal knowing.
And so a lot of people have mistaken a lot of my attempts to talk about this over the years as heretical or I’m a Samaya breaker. I’m a hellion or I’m a demon, but I don’t feel that at all. I just feel that I want to develop that locus of control where I understand my own wisdom, where people can’t~
(12:57):
If people defame me or gossip behind my back or call me names or have a lot of ideas or unkind, that doesn’t sort of knock me off my own confidence and inner knowing. So this is a very powerful place to return to in self-development and really having these qualities of openness, groundedness, clarity, and wisdom come through you. You can’t do that by giving your power away to somebody else, even if your devotion is pure.
And I wanted to leave with one little anecdote, and this is a secondhand story, so bear with me. But one of the teachers here in Crestone, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, he lived in Boulder and he was the chair at the Naropa University for the religious chair. And he’s a high teacher. And the Shambhala community, it’s a big Buddhist community in Boulder, they didn’t have anyone to be there when their community where people were dying.
The Story of Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
(14:01):
So he was called upon to help when Sangha members were dying. And at first he was really excited. He said, “Oh my God, I’m going to be able to be around these people who’ve done three month retreats and lots of empowerments with someone that they studied with, which we regard as a really enlightened being.” So he’s like, “Wow, I’m going to be with them. It’s going to be such a privilege.” And this is a really sad story, but it relates to what I’m saying. And he reports that time and time again, he would be with these Dharma practitioners in Shambhala, Vajadhatu used to be called. And we would still be tremendously afraid at the moment as we were dying. They talk about how the winds and elements start to dissolve and you have this sort of sinking feeling and you start to lose your visual perception.
(14:55):
So everything starts to fall. And they would see him and they would be really devoted like, “Oh, I’m so happy you’re here, Rinpoche. Please bless me. Please perform this practice called Phowa, which you eject consciousness to help them to have a better death and rebirth.” And he said that they had a lot of devotion and they were happy for him to come. But guess what’s happening? Mind’s looking outward for a savior. It’s still that dualistic grasping. And he said that time and time again, as they were dying and the elements were starting to dissolve, the hearing, the sight, they would get really, really scared. And a lot of our Dharma practice is to prepare for this moment of death. But he said that they would get scared and that they wouldn’t know where to go as if they’ve never done that internal training and found the internal wisdom or the internal center or the guru or the vast mind within.
(15:52):
It’s like they’ve never even seen it before. And that’s all we ever talk about. We have lots of doctrines. But people missed the whole entire point because they never really found that lamp within. They never really found that locus of control. They never really went inside and went deep. So even though we have devoted our lives to the Dharma, the Dharma is not just following a guru and being a good girl and putting up lots of pictures of a Lama every day and then thwarting Dharma quotes and getting lots of likes. And basically, that’s not the Dharma. The Dharma is not Tibetan culture. Lama is an objectification and doctrine. The Dharma is what the Buddha did when he sat down under the tree and went inside until there was some signs of realization. So I just would love to invite my friends who left to maybe, if you feel like it would still be of benefit, to feel okay about cutting a lot of the social stuff, which I think has become just a huge, giant ego-based distraction and credential and a method for the mind to look outward.
Training for the Moment of Death
(17:04):
And at the moment of death, if you train in that way where you really go inward and you really feel a sense of inner knowing and a sense of some of the root instructions taking birth in your being, then I think that we’re going to have a better time of it. We won’t be so scared like Rinpoche was talking about. Because he said, “If you haven’t done the internal training and found the quietude of the guru within, we call it our natural face, the real sacredness within that vast openness. If you don’t have familiarity with it,” he said, “On your deathbed, it’s way too late for me to begin to train the students in that. You can’t just start giving instructions for people to go inward. They would have had to have been training in that for a really long time. And since death can come without warning, people can have strokes, heart attacks.
(17:59):
I’m 56. I mean, who knows? In any moment, so it might be a good idea for us to begin to train in that way and go way back. Just stop all of this bullshit and stop this credential and this pride and this arrogance and this Facebook and Instagram likes and just using the doctrine as a giant, giant ego trip of peacockness and distraction and missing the entire point. So I’m not heretical. I’m a little bit of iconoclastic, but I feel like what I’ve always ever talked about is to go inward and find the inner guru and take refuge in that with devotion, humbleness, and openness. So what I’m saying is not pride. So the locus of control, when we grow up and we stop looking outside for meaning and value, and we need a lot of confirmation for our broken ego. You become an adult, grow up, do what the Buddha said and had done.
Becoming a Light and a Lamp
(19:10):
Model his actual method of going inward and going very, very deep and then see what’s there because that’s the real growing up. And then they say, even if the Buddhas of the three times rise against you, no one can knock you down. You can be strong in the middle of all these things that we’re seeing with the wars and all of the climate change. We can become a light and a lamp in this world. And that’s what this world needs right now. Shining a light within the darkest of times. But that light can’t be fake pride and doctrinal knowledge. It has to be real gritty, 98% perspiration effort of self-development. And self-development is also, in order to get to that point where you even make that pivot from outside to inside, it will take bravery and self-honesty and looking at shadow. Even if we’ve been living out of shadow for a really long time, we think we’re really somethin’ somethin’.
(20:16):
To be able to say, okay, I’ve really used the Dharma in a wrong way. I’ve devoted my life administratively to a teacher and we’ve created unhealthy environments of syncophancy and command and control. And given my power away, the locus of control has been on the guru to sort of tell me how to live. I’m an infant. It’s an infantile relationship with the guru. I don’t think that’s what anyone ever wanted in any of the Buddhist teachings. So what have we done? And so a brave, real honest look at what we’ve created that we call the Dharma. It’s not Lama-ism. It’s not chubas and braids and doctrine and pride. I feel like we’ve missed the whole point. And so as Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche mentioned, please, I think that if we could all train in the essence in a real simple way and make that known so that when we do pass, we won’t be so scared and so confused.
Turning on the Inner Light
(21:18):
And then if we turn on that inner light, whatever time we have in this life, we’ll be filled with wisdom, efficacy, and compassion rather than just meanness and pride and distraction. So thanks so much for listening.
Sources:
Thanks to deep conversations with trusted friends Be Scofield, Max P. Dawa Z. and Jim B.
image: pexels-mikhail-nilov-6932123.jpg
- Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, DN 16
- Kālāma Sutta, AN 3.65
- Veidlinger, “Oral and Literate Traditions,” Oxford Bibliographies in Buddhism
- Aldrovandi, “Aniconism Revised,” University of São Paulo
- Huntington, “Early Buddhist Art and the Theory of Aniconism,” Art Journal
- Karlsson, “The Formation of Early Buddhist Visual Culture,” Material Religion
- Steca, “Locus of Control,” Springer Nature
- McCarty & Ramlakhan, “Locus of Control,” Springer Nature
- Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice