When re-reading Shambhala Path of the Warrior, and when listening to this podcast episode (Peace of Mind – Ven. Chung Ohun lee) I had one of those Satori moments about what it means to be buddhist (to me … this is not any kind of claim that I’m fully right on this, but it felt real at the time). This isn’t going to be very well put, but in any case, here it is. It occurred to me that the whole of buddhism is really about just growing up, and not being so childish.  All the responses and neuroses they talk about are really just other ways of saying “stop being childish”.  So here are a lot of ways in which I find I’m childish:

• I get angry at moths
• I FREAK OUT about confusing schedules
• I feel offended to the point of having a tiny tantrum when students criticise my classes
• When I see that my house is messy, I feel livid, and throw a tantrum (tantrums are a major theme here) and wish someone else would clean it up, or that someone else had already cleaned it up.
• When I’m late, I start to panic and scream at other drivers to get out of my way (there’s usually swearing)
• I get pissy when I have to stop doing something I’m enjoying doing
• I get resentful when I have to start doing something I don’t want to do
• I am afraid of envelopes, especially if they look official
• I’m moderately obsessed with getting credit for stuff
• A non-trivial part of me wants to be a princess

So basically, there are a very few of the ways in which I freak out.  
And as I was listening to the podcast, and rereading Trungpa, I thought “Right — buddhism is actually ‘just’ (I’m sure I’m wrong on this) about not freaking out”. Not panicking. Not losing your mind. Remaining sane.  Not being pulled totally off mental course by things. 
So it doesn’t mean “always be happy” or become Neo in the Matrix or whatever. But just don’t freak out.
There’s a book called “A Cave in the Snow” by Vickie MacKenzie in which a monk’s house is covered in an avalanche. She starts to meditate her way to death, then realises that she’s still got fresh air in her little hut, so she decides to dig herself out.  She told this as a really buddhist story — and the main theme of this is that she didn’t freak out when she was buried! She just looked at the situation somewhat clinically and said “well, what are my options here”.
This is how I believe the platonic ideal of a surgeon would act: I wouldn’t want a surgeon panicking if something started to go wrong. I’d want to know that a surgeon would take a breath, centre themselves, and say “what are my options here”.
And I think that’s really what it means to have buddha nature — to just be grown up! Fully grown up!  Not living in a world of delusion and wishes and fantasy and anger and role play. To stop freaking out about stuff. Don’t panic — just look at the situation and figure out what to do!  Don’t yell at the mess in your house (I’ve done this) (recently), just clean it!  And if you have trouble cleaning it, consider whether you have too much stuff to maintain!
This contextualises the role of meditation: meditation is practice in not losing your mind. I need to practice not losing my mind because I lose it all the time when those triggers happen to me.  So if I meditate, I can strengthen my “don’t lose it” muscles. I can practice tugging my mind back when it starts to go astray.  And over time, hopefully that will get me to a place where if something triggering (one of the things on my list, or other things I forgot to list) happens, I can tug it back and not freak out!  And then I’ll be able to not yell at the person on the phone, or not freak out that I missed a ferry, or not scream angrily at the person who sat through an entire light not turning left even though there was nobody coming from the other direction and why couldn’t you just make that turn so I could also get through the light?  I’ll be able to breathe, and remember to just not freak out!