The Uptight Buddha
In this simple teaching, Richard reminds us that wherever we are and whatever we are experiencing, if it is held with awareness, it contains the seed of transcendence. Humanity in its current state might be seen as the Uptight Buddha, with its attachment to opinions, divisions, and fears. Even tension, Richard points out, can be held as lightly as a feather – a view that takes a huge load of our shoulders.
We are a rolling passage of consciousness that is unfinished, incomplete, moving and striving towards perfection.
‘The Uptight Buddha’ is a mischievous title, and it is inspired partly by a friend of mine, a very awakened being, who happens to have Parkinson’s disease. As he observed himself and his Parkinson’s, he noticed that it does not affect his journey of awakening in any way, but it makes his body uptight. He has a tightness and a quivering, an energy field that he has inherited in some way. He refers to it as the Uptight Buddha, which I think contains a very deep piece of wisdom. We oft en think that we have to be perfect, and we think that the fi eld of awakening, or the Buddha principle, is a very blissed-out person sitting in perfect awareness of all that is, and that everything is idyllic. But it is not always that way.
We have to deal with whatever comes along in life, yet, like my friend, it does not have to affect the awakened clarity of our inner nature. Th is is an important teaching for all of us, for the new aeon, if you like, because we have these expectations of ourselves and therefore of others.Â
Sometimes we expect everyone to be more awake, and super-clear or super-aware or super-moral, but actually we are what we are, and we are just humans.
So it is a really powerful thing to allow yourself permission to be awake in whatever state you are in. You can bring your full attention to the moment, even now while you are reading this. Take some deep breaths and just bring yourself into the present. Right now, in this moment, you are as awake as the most exalted being, as Buddha, as Christ, because you are in perfect presence, with whatever stuff is going through you. This is the Uptight Buddha because, sometimes, we are a rolling passage of consciousness that is unfinished, incomplete, moving and striving towards perfection, and yet we may never get there. If we did get there, what then?Â
One day, of course, all consciousness will attain that perfection, but then it will be done, the movie will be over, and something else will be born and will begin. But it is not about the ending, it is about the journey itself. We just need to let go of some of the heaviness that we accumulate along the way. There is a story that when you die, you go up to the heavenly realm, and before you go in, you have to weigh your heart against a feather on the divine scales. If your heart is heavier than the feather, then you are sent back down for more learning. But if your heart is as light or lighter than the feather, then you are allowed to go in. It is a powerful story.
Can you be light-hearted at that level? With the world as it is, with all the chaos, crises, questions and worry about the future, with all the difficulties that we face, the divisions and the opinions, can you maintain light-heartedness? It does not mean that you make light of difficult things, it just means you carry light-heartedness in the core of your being.
With all the chaos, crises, questions and worry about the future, with all the difficulties that we face, the divisions and the opinions, can you maintain light-heartedness?
If we want to be free, if we truly want to be free, we are going to have to drop some of this baggage that we are carrying – this person is wrong, that person is unenlightened, the other person is this or that. Being light-hearted means being empathic, and therefore able to see everything from the opposite viewpoint. This means that you can see your own viewpoint from its opposite with equal empathy, and so you can still hold your view, but you are going to hold it in a lighter way. You become aware of holding that view because it fits with your character, and the persona that you have in this life. In another life, you would have a different persona, yet you would have the same underlying consciousness.
We are going to have to expand way beyond these divisions that come into the world, whatever they are. Wherever our opinion settles, wherever our view lands, we have to hold it lightly. And that is where the whole of humanity is, in a sense, in the Uptight Buddha stage. And we have to hold this stage that we are in as lightly as possible and see that we are going to move through it. We are going to move progressively into transcendence. It is a journey, and the bliss and awakening in that journey are in how we get there, not when we get there, because every step is precious.
Being in the eternal present moment that the mystics continuously remind us of is the only thing that keeps us safe. It keeps us in the hub, the centre of the wheel, and then we do not get lost in the spokes. The spokes are all the different machinations, divisions, possibilities and viewpoints, with each spoke looking from a different place. It is wonderful to travel around some of those spokes and see through them, and yet we also need to be the one in the centre, in the hub which does not move and which never changes.
It is OK to be right where you are. You are needed there.
Wherever you are at in your being, in your body, your emotions, your relationships, your community, your job, your business, your purpose or lack of purpose, you can be an Uptight Buddha if you have to. It is all right. It is OK to be right where you are. You are needed there. But be there with awareness and contemplative mindfulness, and be there with love and acceptance of yourself. Then you can soften and yield into that presence, whatever comes up, whatever shape your life is currently taking. You will take a lot of pressure off your shoulders because you will stop wanting things to be different from the way they are. Although you may still have that evolutionary urge of wanting to improve and find more peaceful ways of being, it begins with us being right here in the present moment and really embracing it. What a beautiful, simple and timeless teaching that is.
