Of course, the answer to everything I have been writing about recently is letting go. Somehow, we intuitively know this, have all felt the joy that comes with being able (if only for a moment) to completely release all holding and relax into the moment. Love can be this way, prayer can, meditation, sex, or releasing in a situation in which we can truly, completely relax (unlike most vacations). The feeling is unparalleled and is a intimation of what that final release of Nirvana must be like.
Why do we cling to our illusion of control when it causes so much pain? Though we have experienced the joy of letting go, I don't think we entirely trust it. What we have come to believe is that if we don't hold tightly to all things, life will spin out of control and we and those we love will be done irreparable harm. I know that for me I also don't want pain to be part of the mix. If there is no guarantee that my pain will end when I let go, then I want to hang on to the delusion that if I stay in control I might be able to somehow obviate the pain. But, as I have written before, the Buddha made clear that this tight holding only exacerbates pain by turning it into suffering.
Someone once said that the equation for suffering is pain times resistance. Pain of some sort, whether physical, emotional, or psychic, whether from unexpected causes such as accidents or expected ones like aging is inevitable. So the question is, do all these walls and barriers I place between myself and pain increase or decrease my level of pain? The obvious answers are, first, no; pain has a way of finding us no matter what we do. The other answer is that while I am busy building my defenses I have neglected living the moment I am in, which also increases my suffering.
So, what would letting go look like? In some ways it is easier to describe what it is not than what it is.
--It is not giving up the fight, at least not exactly. Yes, we have stopped fighting against what is, but that doesn't mean we throw up our hands and stop striving to be the best people we can be and this world the best place it can be.
--It is not complacency. Far from it. When we let go of our need to defend ourselves against "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" we regain an enormous resource of energy we can use to take on the true injustices of the world.
--It is not an invitation to space out and disconnect. Nothing is more valuable than making connections with others and remaining awake and aware while doing so. The meaning of the word Buddha is, after all, "to be awake".
Still, this is not easy. I find myself clinging, clinging, clinging to that illusion of control despite all evidence to the contrary. I have no more control over the day to day flow of the world than I do the flow of a great river. I have no more control over your behavior than I do over gravity. I have no more control over aging, disability, dissolution and death than I do over an avalanche. As if I could stand on the mountainside and call a halt to all that falling, rushing snow; that is how little power I have over the day to day causes of my pain and difficulty. Unlike the avalanche, though, my resistance to the fact of my pain actually causes the pain of being hit by that emotional wall of snow to increase exponentially.
It is, then, a constant process of reminding myself of the need to let go of all that I can whenever I can. Meditation, as one might guess, helps immensely because when we sit in meditation we are letting go just by sitting there, letting go of our need to DO something for that. True, the mind often has other ideas and wants to keep us planning, thinking, scheming. But in those moments of quiet between the thoughts we can feel the joy of letting go and know that it awaits us if we want it more than our suffering.
Why do we cling to our illusion of control when it causes so much pain? Though we have experienced the joy of letting go, I don't think we entirely trust it. What we have come to believe is that if we don't hold tightly to all things, life will spin out of control and we and those we love will be done irreparable harm. I know that for me I also don't want pain to be part of the mix. If there is no guarantee that my pain will end when I let go, then I want to hang on to the delusion that if I stay in control I might be able to somehow obviate the pain. But, as I have written before, the Buddha made clear that this tight holding only exacerbates pain by turning it into suffering.
Someone once said that the equation for suffering is pain times resistance. Pain of some sort, whether physical, emotional, or psychic, whether from unexpected causes such as accidents or expected ones like aging is inevitable. So the question is, do all these walls and barriers I place between myself and pain increase or decrease my level of pain? The obvious answers are, first, no; pain has a way of finding us no matter what we do. The other answer is that while I am busy building my defenses I have neglected living the moment I am in, which also increases my suffering.
So, what would letting go look like? In some ways it is easier to describe what it is not than what it is.
--It is not giving up the fight, at least not exactly. Yes, we have stopped fighting against what is, but that doesn't mean we throw up our hands and stop striving to be the best people we can be and this world the best place it can be.
--It is not complacency. Far from it. When we let go of our need to defend ourselves against "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" we regain an enormous resource of energy we can use to take on the true injustices of the world.
--It is not an invitation to space out and disconnect. Nothing is more valuable than making connections with others and remaining awake and aware while doing so. The meaning of the word Buddha is, after all, "to be awake".
Still, this is not easy. I find myself clinging, clinging, clinging to that illusion of control despite all evidence to the contrary. I have no more control over the day to day flow of the world than I do the flow of a great river. I have no more control over your behavior than I do over gravity. I have no more control over aging, disability, dissolution and death than I do over an avalanche. As if I could stand on the mountainside and call a halt to all that falling, rushing snow; that is how little power I have over the day to day causes of my pain and difficulty. Unlike the avalanche, though, my resistance to the fact of my pain actually causes the pain of being hit by that emotional wall of snow to increase exponentially.It is, then, a constant process of reminding myself of the need to let go of all that I can whenever I can. Meditation, as one might guess, helps immensely because when we sit in meditation we are letting go just by sitting there, letting go of our need to DO something for that. True, the mind often has other ideas and wants to keep us planning, thinking, scheming. But in those moments of quiet between the thoughts we can feel the joy of letting go and know that it awaits us if we want it more than our suffering.
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