SADNESS
The journey that unfolds through our meditation practice begins with acceptance. We accept where we are in the present and, returning to the breath, we are returning to the heart of our experience. In this way, we are accepting each moment. In time, with consistent practice, we train the mind to accept our life as it is. The heart of our present experience expands to all our experience. And in time, we see our life not in terms of the time we have, but how we can deepen the experience of that time.
Buddhist teachings regard time as elastic. Our experience of time expands and deepens when we are growing and when we are aware. While our time is long or short chronologically, it can also be shallow or deep experimentally. We often cruise across the surface of our life, accomplishing, accumulating, and crossing off items on our ‘to do’ list. But sometimes life stops us, and we experience the profundity of being alive. Sometimes this process is amazing as with the birth of a child, falling in love, or beginning a new life. And sometimes being stopped in our life is simply painful, as with the death of a loved one, leaving a relationship or losing a job. But most of these profound experiences were accompanied by moments of fear and pain. If we fixated on the fear, we might never have contacted the depth of our life.
One of the ways we avoid fully experiencing our life is when are locked into the surface of our life. This materialistic approach is necessary but is not the entirety of our life. Yet, out of fear and anxiety we lock into the momentum of our ‘to do’ list trying to outrun the deeper feelings that threaten to block our momentum. But these very deep feelings grant access to the fullness of our experience. The fullness of experience is happening now and at no other time. It is only here and in no other place. Acceptance of the moment grants access to deeper understanding.
Therefore, we can see acceptance as an act of love.
It’s our work as mediators to deepen our experience and get more out of the time we’re gifted. This requires acceptance of the interruption. We learn to welcome the fear as a harbinger of a peak experience. In this way, we can develop the inner strength to see all experience as a possibility. Experience is a gateway to understanding. One very potent gateway is the experience of sadness because if we allow ourselves to feel it, we can be subsumed into a very rich world. Of course, this is the very reason we will avoid sadness by picking up a drink, overeating, or trying to fill the resounding space sadness creates. “I don’t have time for this, I’ve got to get back to my list!” Perhaps we are afraid of a breakdown, or of falling apart. But if we develop the bravery of a compassionate heart, we can look into the chasm of sadness and touch something very real. Then the breakdown may become a breakthrough. And falling apart might lead us to a fresher more unencumbered relationship to ourselves.
Sadness is a potent gateway because it is very real. Trungpa, Rinpoche called it the most genuine emotion. Unlike anger, for instance, which often deflects outward into a defensive posture and fixation, sadness forces us to look inward and access our feelings.
Once we recognize sadness, we can look into the experience with acceptance, kindness, love, and patience. Pema Chodron always recommended we eschew intellectualizing and feel the feeling. This is hard with the reflective intensity of anger. But with sadness, all we need is loving acceptance to get below the waterline of experience and investigate the experience of our feelings. This does not require narrative or explanation. In fact, investigating our experience can lead to a wordless state of just feeling. Just sitting in the gentle embrace of our broken heart can be healing on a profound level.
But then it is important to honor the experience by letting go and allowing it to shift, change and perhaps become something else. The discipline here is that once we’ve contacted the gateway of sadness, we allow ourselves to pass through. This requires letting go. Letting g is not pushing away. Letting go is loosening our grip. It means the experience of sadness is as it is and that is more than enough. It is not about the ‘me’ I so stoutly defend. Sadness is.
With the power of love, we can open to sadness. And with the power of acceptance, we can allow ourselves to be led. With the power of our wisdom, we can feel something new about ourselves in this very old human feeling. Then with the power of discipline, we can let go and step less encumbered into the next moment.