I had such a wonderful, relaxing time last weekend that when I went into work I felt as if I had run headlong into a brick wall. It was such a shock to come from a world of (as it seemed to me) deep rationality and peacefulness and be faced with the verbal violence of my clients, the petty territoriality of some of my co-workers, the artificial emotional boundaries placed around any suggestion of improvement in how things ought to be working there that I felt I could not cope with continuing to work there. The contrast was so stark and shocking that it felt literally impossible to continue.
At the same time, I was confronted in a friend's blog with some political realities that I would rather not have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. Though I understand that the world is a certain way and to deny this is to live in a fantasy land, I have come to the conclusion that to focus on all of that negativity is to bring myself down and make me incapable of functioning in any useful way. I just become depressed, dark and cynical.
All in all, this led to something of a minor crisis of confidence, a feeling of the need to reassess my values and my aspirations. It all felt quite serious and threatening until I realized what these two things had in common: I want things to be other than as they are. That's really all this is. This is one of the tricks the ego plays to claim hegemony over my heart, to make such a fuss that I will pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and only look at the smoke and mirrors.
After my nice, relaxing weekend, I had expectations. Expectations that the peace I felt was a permanent state, for one thing. Not that I consciously thought this, but emotionally I was unprepared to go back into the rough and tumble of daily life, not because I had reached a higher state of consciousness (don't I wish) but because I was viewing things through a group of assumptions that could not be and never have been true: that I could achieve serenity by willing it to be so, that kindness on my part would yield unwavering kindness in others, that somehow the people with whom I work, both clients and co-workers, would somehow be magically transformed into peaceful, unselfish, reasonable beings without any of the emotional burdens we all carry around. What hope was there that the real world could live up to these outlandish expectations?
So, the "crisis" passed. My mind had to go grumbling back into its corner to hatch another plot for mastery of my thoughts, emotions and actions. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't wish with all my heart that things could be different for the world. I think we are headed in a direction that spells disaster on so many fronts it is hard to keep track of them all. I have vowed to keep this blog apolitical and will not contradict that now, so will say no more about specifics. But I do send lovingkindness to all those who do battle in the name of "justice" and "freedom". And, yes, I do wish things could be different at work, I will cop to that. But to set up a series of expectations based on my fantasy of The Way Things Ought To Be is to (here it comes again) create suffering.
This is, of course, precisely what the Buddha taught. He did not for a moment believe that the end of suffering meant the end of pain or a rising above problems. He spoke only of going into the midst of life without any preconceived notions whatsoever about what it all ought to be, no judgments about good and bad (though he did believe in right and wrong, a subtle distinction, I know). What I did last week was to set up a bunch of expectations and state subconsciously that life was untenable without the fulfillment of them. But my understanding of the dharma came along and said quite clearly, "Sez who?" and I did not have an answer to that.
Freedom is in accepting things as they are, as they truly are, and not as I wish they were. This is not the same as pretending that things that are unacceptable are to be ignored, but the very difficult idea that it is only through accepting them as they are first, without judgment or rancor, that we can ever hope of having a positive affect on changing their reality to something more in accord with our concept of what is helpful and will lead the greatest number of us who suffer to a greater freedom.
At the same time, I was confronted in a friend's blog with some political realities that I would rather not have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. Though I understand that the world is a certain way and to deny this is to live in a fantasy land, I have come to the conclusion that to focus on all of that negativity is to bring myself down and make me incapable of functioning in any useful way. I just become depressed, dark and cynical.
All in all, this led to something of a minor crisis of confidence, a feeling of the need to reassess my values and my aspirations. It all felt quite serious and threatening until I realized what these two things had in common: I want things to be other than as they are. That's really all this is. This is one of the tricks the ego plays to claim hegemony over my heart, to make such a fuss that I will pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and only look at the smoke and mirrors.
After my nice, relaxing weekend, I had expectations. Expectations that the peace I felt was a permanent state, for one thing. Not that I consciously thought this, but emotionally I was unprepared to go back into the rough and tumble of daily life, not because I had reached a higher state of consciousness (don't I wish) but because I was viewing things through a group of assumptions that could not be and never have been true: that I could achieve serenity by willing it to be so, that kindness on my part would yield unwavering kindness in others, that somehow the people with whom I work, both clients and co-workers, would somehow be magically transformed into peaceful, unselfish, reasonable beings without any of the emotional burdens we all carry around. What hope was there that the real world could live up to these outlandish expectations?
So, the "crisis" passed. My mind had to go grumbling back into its corner to hatch another plot for mastery of my thoughts, emotions and actions. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't wish with all my heart that things could be different for the world. I think we are headed in a direction that spells disaster on so many fronts it is hard to keep track of them all. I have vowed to keep this blog apolitical and will not contradict that now, so will say no more about specifics. But I do send lovingkindness to all those who do battle in the name of "justice" and "freedom". And, yes, I do wish things could be different at work, I will cop to that. But to set up a series of expectations based on my fantasy of The Way Things Ought To Be is to (here it comes again) create suffering.
This is, of course, precisely what the Buddha taught. He did not for a moment believe that the end of suffering meant the end of pain or a rising above problems. He spoke only of going into the midst of life without any preconceived notions whatsoever about what it all ought to be, no judgments about good and bad (though he did believe in right and wrong, a subtle distinction, I know). What I did last week was to set up a bunch of expectations and state subconsciously that life was untenable without the fulfillment of them. But my understanding of the dharma came along and said quite clearly, "Sez who?" and I did not have an answer to that.
Freedom is in accepting things as they are, as they truly are, and not as I wish they were. This is not the same as pretending that things that are unacceptable are to be ignored, but the very difficult idea that it is only through accepting them as they are first, without judgment or rancor, that we can ever hope of having a positive affect on changing their reality to something more in accord with our concept of what is helpful and will lead the greatest number of us who suffer to a greater freedom.
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