Category: Teaching

CHARIOTS OF DISAPPOINTMENT

Pema Chodron tells the story of a wedding that was officiated by Chogyam Trungpa. Trungpa often used a Japanese hand fan during his talks. And in this instance, as the couple were kneeled before him he hit the would be groom on the head with the fan and said, “pain is not a punishment”.  The startled couple sat there. Then he tapped to the bride-to-be on the forehead saying, “pleasure is not a reward.” There was a pause and then Rinpoche tapped them on the heads again. “Pain is not a punishment.” “Pleasure is not a reward.” Then again. He continued alternating and, as Pema told it, the intensity of the tapping increased each time.

Pain is not a punishment. Pleasure is not a reward.

And in fact, either can be an opportunity.

When things go wrong in. our life we tend to believe it’s a reprisal for some mistake we’ve made, or some lack of character we have. When things go right, we feel rewarded as though the universe was confirming our innate awesomeness. In this way, we develop a bipolar codependency with life. When we allow feelings to become dependent upon external circumstance, we lose our agency and let things beyond our control dictate how we feel. Rather than pausing to check in with ourselves in order to see how we can address our feelings, we often try and manipulate the environment to get what we want. Sometimes we don’t even know what we want, but that doesn’t stop us fixing, fixing, fixing. This is ultimately fruitless. We employ so much effort to address childhood fears that we not only exhaust our spirit but lose the confidence to stand in our own truth. Over time, this confidence atrophies and we become more and more dependent on what everyone else wants.

But how do we actually feel?

And how do others feel?  Or are we just pawns in each other’s game?

Mindfulness practice allows us to stop the momentum of our racing minds so we can include ourselves in the process of our life. Therefore gaps in our mental momentum afford the possibility of synchronizing with ourselves and our life.  Synchronization is not manipulation. It is cooperative, rather than coercive. In order to gain a symbiotic relationship with our lives, we have to interrupt the momentum of the manipulation dance. In order to do that, our mindfulness practice allows us to see gaps and honor them. We come to see the value of having our momentum interrupted long enough for us to become present. And while these gaps are always present, we generally buy into the momentum of habit patterns so fiercely we fail to see opportunities to include ourselves in our life.

Since we live in a material world, our minds are programmed to cling from thing to thing. The momentum of moving from thing to thing keeps us from ever feeling how we feel, and this keeps us from developing confidence in who we are. Everything in material life becomes dependent upon what we get. And this addictive cycle keeps us from ever seeing what is actually there. The more we cling to what we want, the less we see what is there, and so the less we have and then more we cling. Buddhists call this addictive process samsara. The good news is that this addictive momentum is not solid. In fact, there are natural gaps that interrupt this process of occlusion all the time.  Mindfulness happens in the gaps. So, from the point of view of developing awareness, anything that interrupts samsara can be seen as a blessing.

Then why is it so hard to let go?

We become so addicted to the blind momentum of samsara that interruptions actually hurt. Out of fear, we cling so tightly to our projections, we lose any awareness of who we are as we become engulfed in what we think we want.  In this way, we begin to forge a false identity for ourselves based on that clinging.  Therefore, gaps in our clinging feel like little deaths. But, as you know, little deaths can be a beautiful thing. Those little deaths may be the gateways to our life. And so, anything that interrupts the momentum of our mental constructs offers an opportunity to connect to our life.  This is why Buddhists say, “disappointment is the chariot of liberation”. Whenever we are disabused of the me-fusing, ignorance-producing, based momentum, we have an opportunity to step back and see ourselves. Once released from the bi-polar codependency of samsara we can make a genuine relationship to our world.

In this way, we may find that interruptions – while they are anathematic to the aforementioned self-identity – give us a way out of ourselves and into our world. So not only do disappointments to our ego-plans open up the space for new opportunities, but it is in the very discouragements and disappointments that we find common ground with others. Samsara wants us to believe that we can find perfection. This just develops isolation, as no one is perfect. On the other hand, we all make mistakes, so connecting to imperfections is a more efficient way to connect to others. And connection is the remedy to addiction. And samsara is based on addiction. Every time we allow the gap of disappointment to interrupt samsara, we have a way back to our life.

Rather than changing the environment, mindfulness practice encourages us to see what is actually here and to honor how we feel so we can actually become part of our life.

 We are not always healthy.  We are sometimes broken and easily triggered.  We are sometimes depleted and feel we need to fix something, add something, change something or devour anything. What is actually devoured is our capacity to satisfy our needs. The more our wants cannibalize our needs, the more our wanting becomes an obsession.

Humans are funny. To a great extent we have everything we need. Yet, there always seems room for us to want more. In our healthiest moments, that ‘room for more’ can be left as is. A space where ‘more’ can come to us, rather than reaching for the same old tropes, to which we seem hopelessly attached. It’s odd, but actually waiting a beat, can help us connect to spontaneity.  We think leaping into the pit blindly is living in the moment, when actually it may be escaping the moment. When we pause – even for an instant – we allow the space to see what comes next. Then we have the power to step into our next moment and the lateral space to see alternatives. Then we can let life come to us, rather than grasp blindly at the same old patterns.

Naturally, this creative space is dependent on feeling balanced and content. This is where a daily meditation practice comes in. We learn to become aware of ourselves and our tendencies. We see the moment of our panicked gripping – eventually before it comes – and we can relax into space, rather than react in programmed panic. Then, rather than needing to fill the open space with our wanting, we can simply appreciate what is already there.

With space we see more clearly. Intriguingly, this allows things beyond our contextual frame to dawn. For instance, the phenomenon we call an “a-ha moment” usually comes from open space.  It’s not that these moments appear out of nothingness so much as when the mind is released from its obligation to look for answers, it has the capacity to see what is already there.

Maybe these “ah-ha moments” are everywhere, just waiting to be recognized.  Maybe the same can be said of all of life’s genuine moments. These are the fresh takes that bring a sense of awake to the mind. We can’t figure out these moments, nor can we strategize our way to them.  They simply come as gifts to an open mind and vibrance to life.  And though these moments are often a result of having trained the mind toward an objective, it is not in the tension of training, but in the release that follows, that authentic contact comes. In our healthiest times, we can allow ourselves the room to open to authentic experience. In order for that to happen we need to not fill every space by compressing our life around objective “things.” When we are healthy and balanced we are not gripped with need and we can wait for the game to slow down and come to us.

But we are not always all that healthy, are we?

When we lose balance and become lost in the mind, we loose awareness and, now blinded in the carnival swirl, have no recourse but to rely on familiar memory patterns. We fall for the same reflections in the mind’s hall of mirrors again and again. As they are not real, these images provide little sustenance. This only increases our neediness. It’s as if the universe only understands verbs. We pray to a higher power “I want this, I want that.” But, all we get back is WANT.  So we grab harder to what we want. Only there is no substance to what we get. We have bartered our needs for what we think we want. In this way, we become ever more depleted as we reach out in panicked loneliness and cling to baseless imaginings that return us only further wanting.

When we are healthy, our awareness rides within us.  We are not split apart and we are able to rest in the flow.  In this way, our life force moves evenly within us and we are able to see into the creative space and touch genuine moments of life.  But, we are not always healthy.  We are sometimes broken and easily triggered.  We are sometimes depleted and feel we need to fix something, add something, change something or devour something. The more we actually need, the more our wants become an obsession. The feeling of obsession is initially soothing. Rather than fall into the dark corners of mind we reach for straws until we’ve constructed a strawperson savior.  We teach for the junk, chase that dragon and swoon into a sense of false euphoria. We become enveloped in a protective batting that promises to save us from the sadness of life. In this way, we fill all the space and leave room for little beyond our obsession. At some point, we turn ourselves over to the power of our desire, lose our present, and so doing, loose our mind and our life.

And all the while life is going on nonetheless. Bills are piling, friends are leaving, life is calling but we are too obsessed to listen.

I call the opposite of “ah-ha moments our  “aw-shit” moments.  Aw-sit is when we CHOOSE – knowingly or not – to abandon ourselves, abdicate authority over our life and hand ourselves over to obsession. Obsession can be a momentary thing, as when we stuff the pain in our heart full of chocolate.  It can be a bowl of shut-the-fuck-up, it can be a mind-set we cannot shake, or it can be an addiction that controls our body spirit and mind. But, whether it be large or small the obsession is gripping to a false image that eclipses the rest our life.  The reality is never what we think. But in that moment of clinging we shut out the lights, lose the space to see and choose the fantasy of escape over the reality of what is actually there. Its like squinting our eyes shut and jumping off a cliff in order to save ourselves. In the words of the guru Bugs Bunny, “that trick never works.”

Whether our obsession has become the raison d’etre of life, a recurrent escape or a toxic philosophy that lies sleeping in the shadows of mind, we have taken a simple experience in life and fetishized it into an object of disproportionate importance.  We loose context and completely blind ourselves in a misguided attempt to save ourselves.

Save ourselves? From what? Our life? Is it that bad? Or has it simply become bad because we’ve mistaken the rush of dopamine for the value of actually commanding our life?  And, of course, the great irony is that the more we escape our life, the harder it becomes.

The alternative is to wake up into the flow of our life. By training in mindfulness of body we can feel the moment of gripping. By developing mindfulness of spirit we begin to gain contact to our emotional world, understanding wants and needs. Mindfulness of mind is the awareness of our thinking, the past layers of programming to the momentary blips that refocus – or unfocus – reality. Once we understand the difference between projection and reality, we can relax the body past grabbing onto projections and into the space of choice.

With synchronicity of body, spirit and mind we can relax into a healthy and productive connection to our life.

The cessation of suffering is a possibility on the path of awakening.  It is a continuously occurring experience that indicated that suffering is not permanent or solid.  A classically western application is to take any statement to its extreme, as though the cessation of suffering indicated a permanent solution, a rainbow at the end of our journey.  Many theistic systems posit their version of an end to suffering as a reward for compliance to their system.  The Buddhist path is non-theistic.  Rather than salvation it suggests that we have to do the work ourselves, learning each step of the way how to free ourselves from suffering.  It relies on a path to liberation and is, hence, process oriented.  The path shies away from blanket statements of finality.  Even it’s base premise, that suffering exists, is posited against the fact that it also does not exist.  

This cessation of suffering is possible at any time.  We experience this in glimpses we refer to as gaps.  There are gaps in the constant pressure of suffering that are cracks in the walls of imprisonment where sunlight shines through.  In these gaps, we see beyond the suffering to the world beyond.  These moments do not imply a finality to the end of suffering but simply a changeability that denies the finality of suffering altogether. Pain and the cessation of suffering are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, they are bound into a counter reactive interplay.    The cessation of suffering happens concurrent to pain and difficult situations.  Pain is a natural experience in life.    Suffering is caused by a reaction to the natural experience of pain.

To be free of suffering we might look directly at the pain in its center.  Suffering is caused by a reaction to the natural experience of pain.  It is said that the experience of sentience is an experience of pain.  Like it or not, pain is part of life.  It marks the passage of time, as well as the important moments within.  Whether it be birth, old age, sickness or death pain is a constant reminder that we are alive.  Once we acknowledge this truth, we might develop an appropriate respect for our life and all of its experiences.  Perhaps we will slow down and stop disregarding our existence by rushing past it like a drunk driver speeding to outrun accidents and police.  Acknowledging pain and learning to love ourselves we are brought back to the present and are released from the suffering we generate trying to hide from our life. 

THE MECHANICS OF SUFFERING

Desire can lead us into the vastness of the natural world, or it can boomerang back into the mind in a spinning compulsive prison.  If we open to beauty we can connect to the present free of regret and speculation.  But, we’d expose ourselves to the heartbreak of that naked moment.  So we might try and hedge our bet by appropriating the moment in a psychological selfie. This moment is mine.  However, if we are truly open, the world we are seeing is bigger than we.   This is frightening.  So, we will frequently choose to flee this discomfort by trying to cling to some part of our experience.  As soon as we say this part is mine, the whole thing feels more manageable.  However, nothing could be farther from the truth.  In fact, we are off to the races on the wild carnival ride of samsara.  And then, the more tightly we cling, the less we actually see.  It’s as though, in the panic to be free of pain, we squeeze our eyes shut, grab the bar of the cart and hope for the best.  

If pain is the necessary discomfort of life, suffering is the impacted environment around that pain.  Whether physical, societal or psychological, suffering is caused by a panic-fueled gripping to the things in life.   Our panic causes us to blindly adhere to things in order to avoid the pain of existence.  One characteristic of clinging is lack of sight.  We cling so tightly to things outside of ourselves, that we lose ourselves to them.  Clinging is a process of gripping that turns fluidity into density throwing us out of step with a universe characterized by movement and change.  The fiction of the self created by this clinging creates friction between ourselves and the natural movement of the universe.  We become alien to our actual experience and a pathogen to the natural order.  With great hubris, we pretend to the gods and believe the strength of our clinging can create permanence.  Yet, no matter how strongly we grip, this clinging is not strength.  It is desperation.  This gripping makes us feel solid, dense and protected.  In fact, we are all the more vulnerable, ignorant and adrift.  Cut off from our fundamental goodness and connection to all, we find ourselves needlessly desperate and alone. 

Yet, rather than stopping this wheel of confusion, and finding strength within, we redouble our efforts and sell ourselves to the nearest prophet that promises to alleviate our pain.  The more we run, the greater our suffering.  We grasp at projections of the external world for salvation and sustenance and fall into subservience becoming defined by that to which we cling.  Our identity becomes a zip code, wardrobe, car or job.  Rather than serving us, the things of life have become our masters.  And like American slaves of the 18th century, we take on the names and identities of our masters.   We’re a Bud drinking, Democrat who wears Nike, Levis and a Giants T-shirt who drinks Coke, but never Pepsi.  Perhaps, we have also become a thing.  And, we cling to this thing we call me with the most tenacity of all. 

THE WEIGHT OF SAMSARA

Strangely, we try and escape pain by clinging to it.  The fact that this doesn’t make sense doesn’t seem to deter us.  I mean, why make sense when your already bucking the universe? 

We cling to our pain by clinging to our desire to be rid of pain.  All this binds us further into servitude and suffering.  When we fight pain, or run from its possibility, we create an unnecessary suffering around the pain.  Like muscles clenching around a wound, the reaction to pain can actually cause more damage and long term suffering than the initial wound.  While that initial layering is protection, only by eventually exposing the wound can it heal.  And while we know this instinctively with regard to physical pain, we don’t seem to understand this psychologically very well.  We rarely think to expose the trauma beneath the layers of psychological obfuscation and touch the actual pain.  And so this pain never really heals.  In fact, it becomes more and more inflamed like an emotional sore toe, causing more pain each time it’s touched.  In time, this clenching reaction not only fails to heal the wound, it becomes systematized in body and mind and is triggered by the most innocuous circumstances. Therefore, through fear of pain we cling for dear life, and squeeze the life out of living.  This is the ground by which the pain of living becomes a life of suffering.  The vicious cycle of our mental suffering is a fractal of a larger global experience referred to as samsara, or as Kerouac so coined, “the wheel of quivering meat conception.”  

Samsara has the weight of the entire line of sentient existence, it’s patterns deeply rooted in cosmological, personal and societal experience.  It would be daunting to try to undo this karmic momentum.  But, rather than turn this heavy wheel backwards, suppose we supplant the erroneous view at the very root within ourselves?   We can begin the process of unraveling by admitting that we are human.  This admission implies that we are not perfect, that we fail and are frail and broken experience much pain in our lives.  But, we can learn to own our pain by eschewing judgement and aggression and looking directly into ourselves with kindness and love.  We can leave useless judgments at the door, and enter into the inner sanctum of our fear with care and caution.  Instead of panic fueled by ignorance and past injury, perhaps we can train the mind to awaken and experience the confidence to redirect, that karmic stream at the very outset?

LIBERATION WITHIN

In order to do this,  we need to proceed carefully.  An overly assertive incursion would be 

knee without hitting the walls around the incision?  Its like that.  Slowly, with great love, so we learn to trust.   Then we can see, feel, taste and touch the wounds that are generating so much confusion and perhaps empower them the strength of our compassion.   Maybe, this would give that frightened part of ourselves enough of a sense of confidence that it might let go of the wound and open.  And what will we find there?  Maybe the process itself is the answer.  Perhaps there is nothing to find, nothing to be and no problems to solve.  Perhaps, by caring, enough to look and developing awareness into the darkest places, we find strength.  Maybe we are enough as we are.  Enough at our core.  Enough in our very being. 

When we connect to our basic sense of goodness, we develop a wholesome attitude toward life.  Pain is not a punishment and pleasure is not a reward.  Our existence becomes a blessing and our desires are not a needs but rather compliments.  Without the intensity of need, we’d have no reason to cling as though our life depended on it.  And, generally our life does not depend on the things to which we cling.  In fact, our life might depend on letting some of them go.  By acknowledging our ill-ease or discomfort, we can release the clinging and find thespace around pain, allowing it to change and become a learning experience.  When we let go, we allow experience to supercede the object.  When we enjoy something, the enjoyment is enough, the object only an avatar.   When we get in touch with our basic goodness, we know, quite naturally, that we are enough.  Therefore, we could enjoy that dress if we don’t have to have it.  We could love that car if it didn’t define us.  We could appreciate our job if we knew that it was there to serve us and not the reverse.  We are more important than the job, or the money or the things that serve us.  We can sit back and enjoy our food because we aren’t starving.  We might even look around and regard the company at dinner with appreciation and something of a smile. 

CESSATION 

We become liberated from the bondage of suffering when we release our grip on that which we feel will alleviate our pain, accept the pain as it is.  And then we can look outward to the rest of the world.  This happens intermittently throughout our life.  In fact, it happens intermittently throughout our day as little gaps of silence within the suffering.  By opening our heart to the pain, we can begin to see the space around it, and the gaps within the density.  These gaps have no weight, and so cannot compare to the tremendous intensity of suffering.  But, they represent the way beyond suffering nonetheless.  It is about training the mind to the gentle subtleties of life.  The moments we can feel beyond the panic into the fullness of the truth of existence.  In time, we begin to trust this silence more than the screaming.  We begin to know that we are enough right from the outset and don’t need to change a thing. Even pain.

Pain is our entry into life.  The work is to convince ourselves that it is not a punishment and rather than check out, we can check in.  Pain is the gateway. I have a supplication I use for my internal work. 

I am blessed by this pain.  I feel because I am alive.  May this moment connect me to my own life and to the lives of all who are experiencing pain.  May I not run from this moment, but use this opportunity to become more deeply connected to my life. 

Or, as a friend of mine suggested “Damn yo’ bring it on!”