I know what it is to have an unwilling heart, the heart that says I cannot do this, that there is no need to face the challenge, that denying myself life's little pleasures is not necessary or, perhaps, even kind. I have done enough, this voice says, just doing what is required of me day to day. Often this being alive is painful, a struggle. Sometimes it has involved being silent when I would have spoken, still when I would have raised up in anger. I have suffered, my unwilling heart tells me, and I deserve whatever pleasures I can accrue.
There is, of course, a grain of truth in all that. Life need not be such a godawful struggle all the time. Relaxing into the here and now without any effort on my part to make things different is a joyful state and one to which we all aspire, I think. But this relaxation is not the same thing as self-indulgence or hedonism, as any of us who have persistently overindulged have discovered. After all, if we were perfectly content with who we are and how we react to crisis or ecstasy, we wouldn't be writing/reading this blog or seeking answers to that lingering darkness we feel in our souls. The fact is, the compulsions we use to make ourselves feel better, far from being the ultimate relaxation I choose to call the end of suffering, are in fact one of the practices that lead us away from it. This is one of the tricks we play on ourselves, this belief that endulging ourselves will ultimately lead to bliss, even though we only have evidence to show that it leads to a highly transient happiness followed by much less beneficent feelings and thoughts. As an alcoholic, I have an intimate relationship with these feelings and their futility, but they of course apply to less clearly destructive compulsions as well. Like overeating.
I have come to believe that the unwilling heart arises in response to the idea that within ourselves there are competing entities who demand different behaviors from us. When we give in to compulsive thoughts, it is an act of rebellion against that overweening parental figure (Freud would have called it the superego, I suspect) who demands nothing less of us than perfection. The naughty boy or girl, the one with the slingshot in his pants pocket and the runny nose, who does as he pleases (the id, perhaps?) runs with the wolves and will damn well have a bowl of ice cream for breakfast if that is what tastes good and who the hell are you to tell me any different? stands in opposition to that parental persona.
But these are models of futility and do not describe the reality of what it is to be a human being. Though it may be amusing to describe my mind as composed of disparate parts, it is in fact one cohesive whole. I also find, if I am paying attention, that it is not in any real sense "mine", since I obviously have very little control over what it decides to think at any particular time. What I do have, though, is consciousness, this awareness of the mind (I ask again how the mind can be the essence of "me" when there is a part of me that can objectively observe the mind?) from which I can act instead. I do not have to believe that what I think is in fact who I am. It may be a part of me, or intimately connected to me, but it does not control my actions unless I let it. To allow the rebellion of one part of my mind against another part of it to determine what I do makes about as much since as reading the entrails of chickens or asking that my life course be dictated by the outcome of a wrestling match in a box full of puppies.
Of course, "consciousness" may be too snazzy a word to name this ineffable quality of ours. Others use the term "awareness". I think "heart" comes closest, though even that is prone to misunderstanding; it is too easy for us interpret this as permission to follow every whim of our emotions. In Buddhist literature this quality is sometimes referred to as "the deathless." (I know, I know, that sounds terribly mysterious and out of reach, but it's not, really. I'll no doubt talk about that another day). These are all attempts to name the unnameable, for to name something is to tame it, to bring it within the mind's realm of logic and language. It is, once again, mistaking the finger for the moon, mistaking the descriptor for the real thing, as if any name, Reid or mountain or pain or ocean or Nazi or God or grief or love could hope to encompass the felt experience of these things. The words may well evoke the flavor of them, but no more are them than the smell of the saltwater is the sea.
What this discipline asks of us, then, is to access this deep part of ourselves and act from there rather than from the hullabaloo of the mind. It is only from there that we can find the willing heart, willing to sacrifice the transient pleasures of the body for the deeper joy of the heart.
There is, of course, a grain of truth in all that. Life need not be such a godawful struggle all the time. Relaxing into the here and now without any effort on my part to make things different is a joyful state and one to which we all aspire, I think. But this relaxation is not the same thing as self-indulgence or hedonism, as any of us who have persistently overindulged have discovered. After all, if we were perfectly content with who we are and how we react to crisis or ecstasy, we wouldn't be writing/reading this blog or seeking answers to that lingering darkness we feel in our souls. The fact is, the compulsions we use to make ourselves feel better, far from being the ultimate relaxation I choose to call the end of suffering, are in fact one of the practices that lead us away from it. This is one of the tricks we play on ourselves, this belief that endulging ourselves will ultimately lead to bliss, even though we only have evidence to show that it leads to a highly transient happiness followed by much less beneficent feelings and thoughts. As an alcoholic, I have an intimate relationship with these feelings and their futility, but they of course apply to less clearly destructive compulsions as well. Like overeating.
I have come to believe that the unwilling heart arises in response to the idea that within ourselves there are competing entities who demand different behaviors from us. When we give in to compulsive thoughts, it is an act of rebellion against that overweening parental figure (Freud would have called it the superego, I suspect) who demands nothing less of us than perfection. The naughty boy or girl, the one with the slingshot in his pants pocket and the runny nose, who does as he pleases (the id, perhaps?) runs with the wolves and will damn well have a bowl of ice cream for breakfast if that is what tastes good and who the hell are you to tell me any different? stands in opposition to that parental persona.
But these are models of futility and do not describe the reality of what it is to be a human being. Though it may be amusing to describe my mind as composed of disparate parts, it is in fact one cohesive whole. I also find, if I am paying attention, that it is not in any real sense "mine", since I obviously have very little control over what it decides to think at any particular time. What I do have, though, is consciousness, this awareness of the mind (I ask again how the mind can be the essence of "me" when there is a part of me that can objectively observe the mind?) from which I can act instead. I do not have to believe that what I think is in fact who I am. It may be a part of me, or intimately connected to me, but it does not control my actions unless I let it. To allow the rebellion of one part of my mind against another part of it to determine what I do makes about as much since as reading the entrails of chickens or asking that my life course be dictated by the outcome of a wrestling match in a box full of puppies.
Of course, "consciousness" may be too snazzy a word to name this ineffable quality of ours. Others use the term "awareness". I think "heart" comes closest, though even that is prone to misunderstanding; it is too easy for us interpret this as permission to follow every whim of our emotions. In Buddhist literature this quality is sometimes referred to as "the deathless." (I know, I know, that sounds terribly mysterious and out of reach, but it's not, really. I'll no doubt talk about that another day). These are all attempts to name the unnameable, for to name something is to tame it, to bring it within the mind's realm of logic and language. It is, once again, mistaking the finger for the moon, mistaking the descriptor for the real thing, as if any name, Reid or mountain or pain or ocean or Nazi or God or grief or love could hope to encompass the felt experience of these things. The words may well evoke the flavor of them, but no more are them than the smell of the saltwater is the sea.
What this discipline asks of us, then, is to access this deep part of ourselves and act from there rather than from the hullabaloo of the mind. It is only from there that we can find the willing heart, willing to sacrifice the transient pleasures of the body for the deeper joy of the heart.
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