Compassion For an Annoying World
In the play, “Huis Clos” or “No Exit” French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre introduced three characters that represented a kind of social three-body problem that uncovered the basic instability of human interaction. The nature of this dynamic encouraged the edges of each personna to trigger the others. That dynamic continued in vicious rounds ultimately leading Sartre to famously conclude “hell is other people.”
I once wrote an unlove song that went “people suck, and you’re one of them.” Yet life with the irritations of other humans may be worthwhile simply because we have no choice. It is an existential situation that we can either choose to see or turn away from. Sartre’s play was an existential glimpse of a human condition that left us with no alternative, hence the idea of hell. The Buddhists say the cycle of suffering, referred to as l samsara, is endless. And, yet the Buddha predicted that suffering can nonetheless cease if we understand its cause. Our experience of that endless sea of suffering is enacted by the clinging attachment to the straws of life we feel will save us from drowning. Instead of flowing though life with an open sense of discovery, we grasp to the things we love and struggle to get away from things we hate. And in the turbulence of yes and no, wanting and not wanting, we become blind to the rest of our life.
The Buddha’s remedy for this struggling blindness is to train the mind to settle in the present so that it may develop an objective awareness. Awareness of the things we cling to, awareness of the things that trigger us and eventually awareness of all that we’ve missed due to these obsessions. This is not easy. The deeper we see, the more we feel. And feelings …. well … can suck. In this regard, it is said that irritation is the vanguard of awareness. And as the old song (almost) said, “waking up is hard to do”. Just like the groggy eye-rubbing crankiness many of us experience in the morning, becoming aware of our world can be an uncomfortable and unsettling experience. And yet, should we bring awareness into the hell of our world, we might see that hell itself is a construct. And any construct is a thing, and all things are temporary.
So, why do we suffer? We become comfortable with the familiar. Seeing what we see, knowing what we know, doing what we do supports our sense of security. As we are social creatures, we search out our clan and dance with the partners we enjoy. However, we can unknowingly become attached to what we know, and experience antipathy toward that de don’t. We assume our point of view is self-existing and inviolable. Humans nestle into comfort without looking into that or beyond themselves. Chogyam Trungpa likened this process to creating a cocoon. Cocoon, in this case, is a womb of repetitive patterns, societal norms and bounded thinking in which we find protection but entirely take for granted. We separate ourselves from the dangers of disparity by surrounding ourselves with the familiar. Each of us has our specific style of protective cocoon that makes us feel safe. Ironically, those who flaunt danger sometimes find solace in the familiarity of repetition of their unsafe behavior. A daredevil approach feels brave, but once we’ve learned how to navigate the danger, it becomes a pattern.
We use repetitive patterns as a self protective strategy, even when they are not serving us. But even when they have served us, cocoons by nature are temporary staging areas. Should we fail to move on, at some point, we are not growing. Even if our cocoon is academic study and research, are we able to see beyond our mode? The late Physicist Richard Feynman noted that his colleagues were learning “more and more about less and less.” Many of us are proficient in the things we know, but don’t recognize, or value what we don’t know. The spiritual problem here is that we are limited by that which we don’t see. It’s like the mass of “black” matter in the universe. There is a preponderance of mass in the universe that we can measure, but cannot see. Some scientists rather describe this as unseen or unknown matter, indicating there is something there we are yet to understand.
The brain is happiest and therefore most efficient when it is leaning new things. So, developing awareness in our lives is developing our minds. Developing our mind enables us to develop greater awareness. While being nurtured in the safety of our comfortable environment is essential for our physical health and survival, seeing beyond our comfort points is essential for our mental and spiritual health. Spiritual growth = spiritual health. The more we see, the more we understand. This is developing awareness and is likened to “waking up.” And as we said, waking up is not always pleasant. And so there is a tentative balance between safety and growth. It would be impractical to throw off all caution and engage the world without discernment, but when discernment turns to judgement, we are limiting ourselves. The struggle between stepping out and back to the cocoon is a necessary dynamic for growth.
It is essential for the butterfly to struggle through its cocoon in order to develop the strength to fly. Likewise, it is essential for those on a wisdom journey, to work with the discomfort of waking up. The Tibetans refer to “lakthong” or clear seeing. Lakthong is seeing beyond our reference points and likened to “waking up. When faced with the discomfort of seeing more clearly, a common tactic is to find fault and assign blame. We can deflect the pain of our burgeoning awareness onto a projection of another object. However, this freezes us in place. Once we pinpoint a problem, then it becomes a scapegoat. We are no longer looking, because we are seeing what we believe. Smart people are very susceptible to irritation and blame. People of high intellect can often become impatient with those moving on slower cycles. It’s natural to value our world from the vantage of our own values. Sometimes this conflates into a rigid false binary. Some people are good and some are evil. Assigning a value of evil may be more about pushing away something you find uncomfortable than an absolute value scale.
Those of us too sophisticated to believe in evil, might instead just find other people annoying, irritating or unworthy. And, in truth, some people put up a good case for that. Nonetheless, the more clearly we see and the more we step from our parochial perch, the less protected we are from irritation. It is said that “meditation is not a vacation from irritation.” And in truth, just because people are irritating to me doesn’t mean they aren’t valued by those their own clan. If they exist in the world, then waking up to the world would indicate connecting to some are unavoidable.
So, how to work with this?
- Knowing that there is no right or wrong to the situation. There are points of view that, in fairness, are susceptible to change.
- That said, acceptance of our feelings as valid is important step in waking up. However, understanding that our feelings are subjective are very important. Feelings don’t make us right. They are part of the landscape.
- Being willing to set aside judgement and investigate means everything. Why does it irritate me? What does it mean to me? Did my caregivers do this? This means not making global assignments or judgements. Just being humble enough to ask why am I uncomfortable.
- Having the confidence to NOT TAKE IT PERSONALLY. I am not obligated to feel a certain way about anyone else’s behavior. Non-co-dependence or interdependence means that we are willing to stand on our own without feeling swayed for or against. When I am triggered by someone, they are MY triggers! My mind is all I can effectively change. No one is keeping me from doing that.
My friend Sarah suggested that we could have disintegration rays like in Tim Burton’s movie “Mars Attacks”. She feels they would be compassionate by painlessly eliminating asshooles for our life. Hahaha. Although admittedly a provisional view of compassion, the idea that we could painlessly cut the attachment we have to feeling judgement or obligation to the assholes we endure is appealing. As Christ said, “you will always have the assholes with you.” He went on to say “you will not always have me.” I think it is not up to us to find goodness in our own hearts and endeavor to see others through that.
All of us have wisdom and all of us have neurosis. It is up to us as to which lens we use to see our world.
At this writing we are heading toward a pivotal, some say existential, national election. The two primary presidential candidates have come under fire. One fending attacks against their age and mental acuity. The other, quite literally, in a narrowly missed assassination attempt. Both of these situations have caused us to stop and reconsider solid paradigmatic points of view.
Binaries are fictions we create to better understand chaos. There is a good, and there is a bad. We have right and we have wrong. We feel comfort in fending off chaos with these solid beliefs. All of us have something we feel is real. But clinging to those beliefs create suffering as readily as clinging to material things or other people. This is called materialism of view. We believe our ideas are real. Well, good luck with that. I’ve actually come to see that binaries are by their nature never real. They are crude designations, the first step in the mental triage in trying to address the unsettling unknowing of chaos. The remedy? Hahaha. Relax. We are struggling through a natural process of rebirth. There is no reason to struggle. Our disquiet is urging us to discomfort. Our discomfort tells the part of ourselves charged with being in control that we are under siege. And so we prove our mettle by digging in. We turn false binaries in rhetoric and rhetoric into violence. At this point, the chaos in our mind becomes chaos in our life.
As this brain grew, it gained the processing ability to go beyond the defensive reaction of its dark beginnings and, learning to see a bigger picture, strategize its way past danger and toward sustenance. This remarkable ascension is still happening and that’s a wonderful thing. Yet, that growth happened so quickly, our minds are developing new skills while our brain is still holding to old processes. This creates a dissonance between a view of what may be possible and what we fear could happen.
I sadly never got out of my head long enough to let my heart into the equation but maybe it happened at some point. It wasn’t until years later when meditation gave me the courage to allow vulnerability. But, whether it was groping on a high school dance floor, fumbling in the back seat, or sitting on the meditation cushion, the moment of frailty when we “fall” is an important step in our spiritual journey.
What if instead of paying endless lip service to love, we just deeply kiss the world? What if our politics and our nations were organized around faith in the power of love? I guess the process is to conceive it and then believe it and then let that go and simply be it. Thich Nhat Hanh said, “BE love.” Believe it and be it.
So, how can we make this large picture practical for us? We can begin by loooking at ourselves, as we are. How can compassion make my life a better place? What can I do today to make my life easier and more productive so that I may better serve? This is not selfish, it’s practical. However, trying to make my life better than someone else’s, or a better place for only me and mine, is selfish because it’s narrow minded and myopic. Compassion is developing the tools to care for ourselves so that we can care for other beings. But, we are one of those beings. In fact, until we learn to effectively care for ourselves we will be unable to care for others.
Yet, if we accept that we are a work-in-progress then we can learn to gain confidence in ourselves. Self-aggrandizement, like the arrogance it engenders, covers leads to a lack of belief in ourselves. We know inside that we are not the ideal, and so believe we are less than the ideal. But that truth is if we can accept ourselves and vow to discover what we become, we are committing to a path of supporting ourselves. As we develop self-awareness, we naturally gain regard for ourselves. And though this regard for ourselves we begin to see others more clearly. Freed of the veils of defensive self interest we begin to see that we are not as estranged from our world as we had imagined.
Contacting love in our life is possible if we are free of the turmoil that often occupies our mind. Sometimes this happens accidentally, as when something startles us and stops our mind. Sometimes it happens when our mind naturally notices a flower or bird that opens our mind. 
Compassion is natural to all life. But so is danger. Much of life does what it can to sustain itself and focuses its cellular attention on living, growing and providing, serene in its unknowing. Most life is a natural and necessary part of the dance of the planet. But, the greatest danger to the balance of life comes from the only part of the planet that sees itself. The one who’s acidic stomach is gurgling as it watches the rabbit hop merrily into the wooded shadows. The greatest danger lies within. This is as true of ourselves and our societies. This is the greatest danger because it is the one unseen. We are so attuned to the danger around us, we lie in vulnerable ignorance of the aggression we cause ourselves and others. It is the work of compassion practice to help us reprogram the mind to balance the openness of loving moments with the truth of the dangers in life. We do this by de-emphasizing the importance of ourselves to ourselves that is clouding the picture. THis is not to say that we are not important. We are just not as important enough to suck the air out of life. Humans are a little like drunken blowhards going on about their workout routine at a party. SIr Harold Pinter wrote a play called “The Party” in which a group of haute society people revelled in their intrigues and drama while occasionally, we have seemingly inconsequential references to turmoil in the streets. By play’s end it is clear the turmoil is a violent revolution that will end everything they know.
Over 
direction is too loose. Sometimes we rail against the authority of form, and this stops the flow, but it may be necessary to reboot the process or add freshness to a routine. But once we reboot, finding the groove and waking up in the rhythm of life. Navigating between the extremes of too tight and too loose we find the balance point for optimal creativity in life. A dancer needs discipline, but the point of the discipline is to let go into the piece. No one wants to see anyone work. We want to see them dance. We want the fruit of their labor. So, form need never be seen. The hand of the director should never be seen. The dance should feel as natural as the river.
This post will introduce the idea of slowing down in order to establish or reestablish a flow that allows us to move more efficiently. Here we will use the analogy of the cat, relaxing in repose, so that it has the energy and calm to spring into action. We are talking about how to maintain synchronicity so that our flow is strong and even. This requires an aware meditation of our energy. If we move too quickly for our present circumstances, we lose connection to synchronicity. Such as when we’re moving so quickly, we fail to see where we are going. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition it is said that speeding through life is an essential disregard for our humanity. Our personal dignity becomes subsumed by anxiety as we scurry like a hamster. The goal becomes more important than the journey. But, it is said, the journey is the goal. How we approach life is as important as anything else in life. Meditating our speed allows us to move with grace and dignity. It also allows us to move more efficiently. Sometimes we need to slow down in order to get things done. On the other hand, sometimes we need to encourage ourselves to move more quickly in order to maintain our energy. Sometimes we need encouragement to move at all.
the “Samatha” level of our meditation training. Samatha means peace, or cultivating peace in its active rendering. In Tibetan Buddism it is taught as a 9 stage process of progressive settling. These Tantric systems of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism endeavor to connect mind and body. Progressive settling in to the present is not just “being in the now” in a conceptal sense. But settling into ourselves as the working basis of our path toward full awakening. Yet “path” implies movement. All things, even when apparently still, are in motion. All things are in dynamic interaction with all else. Settling into that movement with unhurried elegance is “entering the stream”.
Awareness of our breathing is the perfect tool for maintaining the meditative flow state. Breathing is the intimate rhythm of our life. It describes a through line of our life from moments after birth to our last moments. Returning to the breath is a way of maintaining our meditative awareness on the cushion, but this process can be effectively carried over into our daily life. We can use awareness of our breathing to relax the nervous system and allow the mind to let go back into a natural flow. Breathing can guide us through turbulent waters. When in doubt, breathe your way through. Allow yourself to settle and then let go. Letting go INTO the flow is not running away from anything. It’s allowing yourself to move past it with minimal engagement. How many issues in life simply do not need the attention we give them. I worked with a shaman who told me my work was not to be anything or to accumulate things, but to learn from everything. Appreciation means not grabbing, but seeing clearly the value of something. We lose perspective when we grab things. We objectify them and interrupt the flow. When we appreciate someone, we have the distance to see them as they are. And if our desire or anger or need causes us to get stuck we have the tools of recognition and return. We see that we are stuck. We feel our stomach tightening, our mind scripting imaginary narratives, our heart aching for something that isn’t here. Then we know we are stuck in the past or the future. The present is a flow state. So when we are stuck, we recognize that and return to the flow of our breath. The breath will guide us back to the flow of now.