It's OK to Feel Alright

It's OK to feel alright. Yes, I know, the world is a mess. I am aware that I have not always been the best person in the world. The question isn't whether or not I deserve to feel alright, whether I deserve to feel joy and happiness. The question really is, what end does it serve for me to feel anything other than perfectly fine? It really is entirely justified for us to feel at peace with life; in fact, it is the only way it is constructive to be. Our anger, our frustration, our self-blame, our doubt, our despair—these are not useful. They feel useful, I will grant you. They feel as if they are the only way to be in the face of everything that is going on in the world and many of the things that have gone on in our lives.

What does the Buddha have to say? One of his primary responses was teachings on the brahma viharas. Now, let me say something first about this term, brahma vihara. This is usually translated as "divine abode". Both the Pali term and the translation, though, make these seem as if they are something remote and esoteric. But we must never forget that the Buddha was above all a pragmatic teacher, so let's delve a bit further.

Brahmas were, indeed, divine beings. Vihara simply means a dwelling or a secluded place to walk. So, the term means "where the brahmas hang out". But the Buddha was using the term to try to evoke a particular understanding in his listeners. In that era, he could safely assume that those he was teaching would like nothing better than to live where the brahmas lived. In our era, a somewhat successful analogy might be "heaven", if to you that means a particularly desirable place. In any case, I believe the best translation of brahma vihara is "a really great place to live your life." The Buddha was hoping his students would want to spend as much time as they could with these states of being.

The brahma viharas are compassion, sympathetic joy, openheartedness, and equanimity. (Let me leap right in and admit that I have used the term "openheartedness" in place of the usual "lovingkindness". Two of my teachers have pointed out that love is a very loaded word and this was not really the intent of the original term, metta. Rather, the Buddha hoped that we would be able to extend our hearts to as many of our fellow creatures as we can manage, thus the term "openheartedness").

Compassion is the "quivering of the heart" felt in response to another's pain. Sympathetic joy is the flip side of this emotion, a quivering of the heart in response to the joy or success another feels. Openheartedness is the ability to keep all beings in your heart, no matter what. Equanimity is the quality which keeps all these in balance without letting them overcome you.

I bring all this up because last weekend it came to me as something of an insight while on a non-residential retreat with Sharon Salzberg that I often act as if there was some virtue in feeling bad. There isn't. It may sometimes be inevitable (grief, pain, sadness) and even useful in leading us into ways of deepening compassion, empathy and openheartedness. But don't we all tend to think (at least sometimes) that because we have from time to time been unskillful we deserve to feel ashamed or that it is only through this shame we shall become purified? Don't we all sometimes believe that we have no right to joy when people are living with war, starvation, lack of clean water, disease, and institutional abuse? Yet these are not only utterly untrue but destructive. We cannot increase the well-being of others through increasing our own suffering. Let me be very clear about this: you will not help yourself, the world, or other beings by feeling negative toward yourself.

Of course, we must also aver that it is also alright to not feel OK. It is not that there is any problem with feeling badly, but our tendency to believe that this is somehow inherently meritorious. It is interesting, isn't it, how self-pity, self-doubt, self-hatred, self-blame and self-examination all begin with Self. How can we act in the best interest of others if we are so thoroughly engaged in such selfish pursuits?

Right now

I admit to struggling a bit these days. Grief has come to our house for a visit. From past experience I know it has a tendency to stay exactly as long as it feels it must (as opposed to the few minutes or so I want to face it). Kathy and I are busy and a little worn down. We have a fully committed weekend, just when I think both of us would rather hunker down and rest (it's not the kind of commitment that is really optional). I am also struggling with the fact that my friend who is dying and my parents who are aging are hundreds of miles away while I am all the way up here in the upper left-hand corner of the continental U.S. My heart feels almost literally torn. (However, today I saw a George Burns quote that made me laugh: "Happiness is having a large, close knit family...in another city". No, Mom, I don't mean it. But it's funny).

Oh, and there are stressors at work and things to do at home that don't get done and the world is a mess and my laptop...well, now, let me say something about my laptop. Does it drive anyone else crazy that tech people always blame the problems they cause (or may have caused) on the user? I am fairly certain there is a vow taken by all of them that the words, "Oops!" or "I'm sorry" or "My bad!" or (god forbid) "That was our error. Let me fix that for you right now for free" will never pass their lips. Or even, "Well, that seems unlikely, but if we broke it, we will take responsibility". Even when the issue was clearly not present before they got their mitts on my computer and is there when I get the thing back, this can never, ever be their problem. Case in point: I had some bad RAM replaced (who knows how it strays from the straight and narrow, that RAM, but somehow it went rogue, I guess) and when I tried to play a DVD a week or so later, the program didn't work. When I went in, I was told that replacing RAM has nothing to do with the DVD program. I'm not an idiot, I know this, but one must admit that the temporal proximity is a bit suspicious. The technician took great umbrage at the suggestion that anything they may have done in the process of replacing RAM could have created the problem. I have determined that this is actually a religious issue. Since God (technology) is infallible, then his priests (technicians) cannot err. And we know how well that philosophy has worked out for religion over the centuries. OK, end of rant.

These past few weeks I don't feel particularly skillful in dealing with stuff, either. Once again, it is Pema Chodron who comes to mind, reminding me that this will happen over and over again, that as soon as I feel I am on the path to fully waking up, I will stumble and fall and wind up (as she says) on the path with mud on my face. Aren't I supposed to be ever ascending? Well, no, I'm not, actually. That sort of goal-oriented, merit badge-earning way of viewing the dharma is more self-defeating then simply not practicing it at all. When I can entirely open my heart to the suffering in my day-to-day life without closing down and without any preference to have it otherwise (the struggle is the suffering), only then am I moving into freedom.

Blessings

Recently I have been practicing blessing those around me. I know, this sounds a little odd, pretentious even. But those thoughts, that I am somehow unworthy of handing out blessings or incapable of pulling them off, are precisely what I need to look at with great penetration. It seems to me that most of us live in a more or less constant state of inadequacy, of thinking that right around the corner is our perfection, but we somehow never quite get there. It's like hanging a carrot on a stick in front of a donkey; we pursue it as if it were reachable while always putting the goal further away by exactly the amount that we come closer to it.


Here is the real truth: we are already there. There is no "there" to get to. We have arrived. Oh, sure, we have some flaws to iron out. As Suzuki Roshi once put it, "All of you are perfect just as you are...and you could use a little improvement." Just because we have some residual impurities does not mean we are not already perfect. How is that possible? In the first place, we cannot be other than perfect if we consider that this moment is the only moment in which we can actually be alive. We cannot be alive in the past or the future. So, the persons we are in the moment are the only persons we could be in this moment and are therefore perfect for this moment. How could it be otherwise? 


I have mentioned before the Sylvia Boorstein response to the question, "How are you?", which is, "Couldn't be better." We couldn't be better. We may be in pain; we may be grieving; we may be angry; we may be an absent friend; we may be an inadequate (by our standards) son, daughter, wife, husband, father, mother, yogi. But in this moment we couldn't be better because if we could be, we would be, and since this is the only moment we have, how we are is perfect within it.


So, who am I to doubt the efficacy of my blessings? I walk down the aisle of a crowded airplane and bless everyone on board. I stand in line in the grocery store and pass out blessings like free samples in the cereal aisle. I walk down the street and bless everyone I meet and all of those in the houses on my route. I sit at work and bless all those hostile, crazy, wonderful people who walk through the door. Why not? For one thing, I have found that it is very difficult (though, sadly, not entirely impossible) to be angry with someone I am blessing. Those toward whom we might feel anger need our blessings more than anyone.


I also bless bugs and dogs and houses and streets and cats and cars. Who's to say I cannot? I bless food and babies and assholes and saints.


But is this all just a fantasy exercise? I firmly believe it is not. It changes me, for one thing, changes the way I think about and relate to the world. But I also believe that putting such energy into the world changes it for the better. After all, why would we cram ourselves into an enormous stadium to share space with the Dalai Lama? Why do we wish to be near Pema Chodron? Why, if not to bask in their blessings? Yet, both of these worthies would be the first to tell you that their capacity to bless is no greater than yours. The difference is that they believe in that power and actively use it.


So, give it a try. Every now and then, go so far as to extend your arms out like the pope and take in a whole crowd of people; don't worry, they'll just think you're stretching your shoulders or something. Place your hands on the head of someone you love and give them a benediction. Go ahead. Bless them. Bless everyone. Look around you. Don't you think we could use some blessings?

Changes

Not that I expect this to shake up anyone's world, but I have made a few changes to the blog and wish to be transparent about them. It has become apparent to me and no doubt to you that the purpose of the blog has changed from a focus on weight loss to a more general reflection on themes from the Dharma. Therefore, in the masthead at the top of the blog the description has been modified to be more consistent with this reality.

The weight loss log in the left column is still there, but has been moved down to reflect its diminished importance within the context of the journal.

Thanks to those of you who are consistent readers and also those who dip in more casually here. I enjoy writing this blog and it is sweet to know there are some who share it with me. It is, as Kathy once noted, a labor of love.

Nothing changes, everything changes

Three days ago I was miserable, feeling about the worst I have in a long, long time. Today the world can do no wrong. What has changed? Well...nothing, not really. Put more precisely, my physical reality is identical to what it was two days ago; my location has changed for a couple of days (to Portland), the weather is about as perfect as weather can be, yet the things that were causing me such misery two days ago have not changed one bit. Except they have changed entirely.

I could not have willed such a change into being. In fact, it is in our nature as humans to cling to such mental states, the analogy being clutching tightly to a hot coal. It's not that we wish to cause ourselves harm, we just really can't help it. When we are in the middle of darkness it seems like the only reality there is. How do we so easily lose the memory of the light that was ours just days before? I suspect it has to do with that basic impulse I have spoken of several times here, the urge to catastrophize as a talisman against the Danger which is always lurking. The belief in this danger is as ancient as the species or more ancient yet. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it feels intuitively right.

Because, you see, nothing was really Wrong wrong. I was tired, I miss my wife (still in Milwaukee), life sometimes feels like one big chore, I'm sorry my mother-in-law had to die, my parents are aging and in need of care I am in no position to help provide (God bless my siblings!). Yeah, yeah, yeah. But these become a Problem only if I define them that way. Inherently they have no emotional weight whatsoever. Above all, if I attempt to solve them, they become a project of the small mind, which tends to make a mess of things.

Now, the small mind has a legitimate function in these situations, of course. Many problems have solutions and I would be foolish to ignore the advice of the small mind then. When I am hungry, the small mind tells me to eat. When I need sleep, it tells me to rest. When what I must do is make one choice or another, the small mind is useful is prodding me to do that. In fact, it has made some very worthwhile practical suggestions, many of which I will no doubt write about here at some point.

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Painted Lady

I wrote all of the above while sitting on the porch swing outside The Painted Lady, a Portland bed and breakfast where I am staying this weekend. I was driven inside both by a dying battery and a hostile crazy man walking down the street with a grocery cart. Not that he was hostile toward me, except as I represented one of the people of the world, who are, it seems, all arrayed against him. I was not aware of this, but did not wish to debate the point with him.

The delusion of the truly insane differs from my own only in degree, not in content or type (or so it seems to me). Because of this, insanity inspires in me awe and curiosity rather than discomfort. (It helps that as part of my work I deal with at least one certifiably insane person daily). I remember a comedy bit from years ago in which one person is remarking to another how sometimes he thinks he is the only real being in the world and all the rest are androids or illusions. At the end, the one he is speaking to looks up to the sky and says, "He knows." I have these thoughts. What if I am living in utter delusion and am in fact strapped down in an asylum somewhere merely dreaming this world? You might tell me I am wrong, that you have proof, but you would say that, wouldn't you? Welcome to my world.

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To continue: where the small mind is not so useful is in the damned perseveration on anything and everything. I know I have written of this before, so won't belabor the point, but how is it helpful to keep mulling the same question over and over again? As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Yet it seems to me that, left to our own devices, this is precisely what we tend to do. We are worrying machines; there is nothing we do half so well as fret, as far as I can tell. And the small mind is so godawful irrational in the solutions it finds. An example: it amuses me to see someone (sometimes myself) who is late for class or work or some other appointment running to get there. The math is simple: over a short distance if you run you will gain only a matter of seconds (if that) compared to going at a leisurely pace. Yet, of course, by running we will appear, to ourselves and others, to have made an effort to get there sooner without really having done any such thing. (The true effort would have been in leaving the house earlier). In the process, we make ourselves anxious and flustered. And, of course, all of our addictions speak to these irrational solutions to what worries us. I have been known to overeat in my concern about how much I eat. How is that more sane than the hostile man with the grocery cart?

So, what's the point? Simply this: given the chance, the small mind will overwhelm the entire capacity of the mind. There will be no space for reflection or the deeper consciousness of the Large Mind. What is required is derailing that small mind, seeing it for what it is, pulling back the curtain and seeing that the Wizard is a frumpy little man (thanks, Toto!) I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL SMALL MIND!! Uh-huh, yeah, not so much.What we need are tools.

I have the good fortune to be connected with a wonderful spiritual teacher, (though I wonder if she would be embarrassed if she heard me describe her that way), who gave me some guidance when I told her a few weeks ago how my life was going and what I was facing. First of all, she urged me to sit in meditation every day. Second, she reminded me about Pema Chodron's wonderful book When Things Fall Apart. Third, she encouraged me to stay embodied, which is to say, to feel what I am feeling in my body, to pull myself away from the constant churning of thought. Fourth, she brought to my awareness the fact that the small mind always tries to convince me that I can think my way out of what I'm feeling. Rather, she suggested, I might want to allow the grief (the pain, the uncertainty, the discouragement and so on) and hold myself in it, hold myself as I would a wounded child. Last, she gave me a metaphor I have found useful: when we are living in the present moment, boulders turn to gravel—the same overall mass, but much more workable.

Was I able to incorporate these into my process immediately? Well...no. I could have used many of them while I was with my mother-in-law and my wife and their family, but the small mind had taken charge and I did very few of these. But since then I have embraced them all.

And all of these actions serve the same purpose, don't they? They remind us that we are in possession of a larger mind, a consciousness, and if we are in contact with this, the small mind cannot dominate our awareness. This is no small thing. The overwhelm of grief, the roiling agony of pain, the chasm of loss, the conflagration of anger, the gaping maw of despair, the drear vacuity of hopelessness—all of these are the machinations of the small mind. Not that these are not perfectly real; in fact, while we are in them the larger mind's job is to validate and enfold them. But to let any of these be all is the fundamental error; to allow the small and worried mind to be in charge is to create and nurture suffering. Though most or all of these states are unavoidable at some time or another in our complicated lives, there is no requirement (show me where it is written!) that we must clutch them to us and wallow in them. It is almost as if we feel we would be disloyal to drop grief for even a moment, or perhaps we believe we do not deserve to feel good. But we do. We can. These are choices.

Return

I have returned from Milwaukee. I was able to be there for the last few days of my mother-in-law's life and at the very end. I find I have very little to add to the many things that have been said about the process of dying. Having steeped myself in the Dharma, I found that it was not difficult to recall that "everything that has the nature to arise has the nature to pass away." Not that this makes the missing-her piece any easier, but the dying itself held no horror. Of course, the true test will be when I come to the time of my own death, if I am aware of it.

The rituals that surround death are also fascinating and in some ways a little disturbing. My wife and I have already planned for what should happen after we die and I can assure you that most of the costly parts of the "death care industry" will not be invoked for us. No caskets or preparation of the body, no burial plots (with the associated "opening" and "closing" fees), no grave marker. But many of the rituals have meaning for the living that survive. I found especially moving the hour or so the family spent at the grave site after it had been filled in and covered (we had a reception at the cemetery family center and then went back). I wonder how those who come after me will commemorate that I was here?

Mostly tired now and recovering from the trip and the experience. I will try to speak more about the Dharma and weight loss and all of that in my next post.