The early Buddhists, evidently, were not meant to retire from the world - as suggested also by the Zen Buddhist aphorism, “Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water.” Despite the ingrained class oppressions of the Hindu varna system, the Buddha was not dissuaded from ordering his monks to strive for the benefit of all people. Great compassion was impossible without its realisation through concrete practice: his teachings were as much about kind thoughts as they were about loving actions. As noted by religious historian Karen Armstrong, “Instead of simply eschewing violence, Buddhism demanded a positive campaign to assuage the suffering and increase the happiness of the whole world.

Even with good-enough upbringing and the consolidation of what might be called a good-enough self, according to the Buddha’s logic, there will still be disquiet, confusion, and insecurity because we are all instinctively struggling to be something (independent, solid, coherent, and self-sufficient) we can never be. Even in healthy personality development, we emerge from childhood defending against the underlying truth of how contingent, provisional, and dependent we actually are. The persistence of such feelings, far from being a symptom of parental failures (even if there have been such failures), is actually the seed of wisdom. Fighting against them only rigidifies our defenses and isolates us further. Acknowledging the emptiness that frightens us, whatever its source may be, is the key to a deeper, and truer, understanding. The emptiness that we fear is not really empty. When it is successfully turned

into an object of awareness, it reveals itself to be vast, luminous, and reassuringly, albeit mysteriously, alive.

Winnicott, and here the parallels to the Buddha are difficult to ignore, believed that “being” precedes “doing,” and that its recovery is the route back to our original nature. He felt that “being” is everyone’s birthright, but that it is something of a lost art, that compliance often robs people of it, that creativity depends on it, and that therapy can serve as a means of rediscovering it if a therapist is sensitive to the need and does not let their male element, in the form of intrusive interpretations, however erudite they may be, interfere. The Buddha, to my mind, thought along the same lines. He said that our original nature is obscured by our cravings and our frustrations, that the ego that emerges in healthy emotional development, while necessary for some things, also blocks us from our underlying and inherent freedom. “Be here now,” my old friend Ram Dass used to proclaim, making it sound as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

In one of the many songs that define his teachings, a student asks the master, ‘I can contemplate the sky, but clouds make me uneasy. Milarepa, tell me how to meditate on clouds.’ Tell me, in effect, how I can achieve equanimity when the clouds get in the way of my seeing the empty, immense sky.

The student goes on and asks again about the difficulty he has in meditating on the calm beauty and serenity of the sea when all he can see is the waves.

Wise Milarepa, the young boy who turned his suffering into violence only to learn how to truly be with his pain, answers, ‘If the sky’s as easy as you say, clouds are just the sky’s play.’ He then adds that ‘waves are just the sea’s play.’ We can’t separate the clouds from sky or the waves from the sea. There is no space between our thoughts, however painful they might be, and our mind. ‘Let your mind stay within the sea,’ he advises, and so, too, ‘Let your mind stay within your mind.

The goal of this book was to act on you as a coaching session might. The goal was to give you something more useful than answers: the ability to work with the questions, the uncertainties, and the doubts that spring from the dips in life. To show you that you could arrive at your own answers; answers that would be authentic and true to you. At some point you may find doubts arising. At some point, if you’re at all like the rest of us, you may ask yourself if you’re even able to participate in that true adventure of growth. If so, know that the answer is a resounding yes. But there’s a catch. It’s yes, but only if you’re willing to put your head up to the mouth of the demon. In this case, the demon is the underlying lack of belief in your capacity to lead. The demon’s teeth are powerful questions, the answers to which frighten and startle you, accelerating your growth.