Two darts

I don't know about you, but I think I need a return to basics. Here's the thing: I keep writing about what has gotten weird in my life and in the lives of those around me, but beyond quoting the Buddha to the effect that one should simply accept what is as it is, I haven't had much to say about a more comprehensive way of looking at things. Whereas I have become somewhat immune to the idea that life is trying to tell me something (I think if we were able to hear Life it would sound something like, "Hum de dum de dum de dum"), still, sometimes I feel like saying to the Buddha: "Thanks a bunch, big guy, but that advice is not really all that helpful, you know? I mean, we're still hurting here." So, here's this:

One of the core teachings of the Buddha is about the feelings of negativity, positivity, or neutrality that arise in response to every experience. This is a universal feature of our lives as sentient beings. This arising of response to experience is not to be avoided—the Buddha addresses this directly; saying it is foolish to attempt to become immune to these states of mind.

Let's say something really bad  happens to you, a cancer diagnosis or an accident. Maybe someone breaks into your house or your sister suddenly and for no discernible reason stops communicating with you. These things are unpleasant. Let's say, on the other hand, that you win a million dollars, a friend receives a clean bill of health, a loved one scores a success like admission to graduate school. These are pleasant. Finally, let's say that your day is filled with the unexceptional, that whole days can go by without any conscious reaction—this is the feeling tone of neutrality. These are inevitable, these feelings. But they do not constitute suffering.

The Buddha speaks in terms of two darts. The first dart is the feeling. The second dart is my reaction to the first, my attempt to cling to the good, reject the bad and ignore the neutral. The first is the natural arising of reaction to a stimulus. The second dart is suffering. The first is unavoidable. The second is what we get to examine when we look to find the end of suffering. Accidentally grabbing a hot coal will cause pain. Tightly squeezing the coal will cause intense suffering.

In a talk I listened to recently, the great Dharma teacher Joseph Goldstein pointed to the way that children react, how in one moment they can be joyful, in the next weeping, and in the third at peace. In our "adult" way of being, we cling to that which creates feeling tones, we mull over the circumstances, the causes and conditions, favoring this obsessive clinging over the more immediate living through and letting go of experience. We reject the painful and beg the good to stay, and in doing so miss out on the immediate experience of the moment.

When my mother was child, she had a dog to whom she was very attached. The dog was struck and killed by a car. When her parents sat her down to tell her about it, they feared an extreme reaction of grief. What she said was, "Dog can't last forever". This is a famous family story, and for good reason. It wasn't that she didn't miss or grieve the loss, but that the dog was gone and that his going had been inevitable. (I know, I know, she didn't think it through like that, but that's what it tells me, anyway!)

Another story (I'm pretty sure I have written about this one before, but bear with me): a meditation master (I believe it was Ajahn Chah, but I'm not sure) once showed a disciple a cup that he cherished. It had been a gift and was beautiful, so doubly valued by him. He told the disciple there were two ways to look at the cup. The first was to dread the day it would be destroyed, since this is the way of all cups, and therefore to protect it and guard against anything that might threaten it. The other way was to say, "it is already broken", to appreciate its beauty and meaning while it was whole, then let it go when it was no longer, to see it then as having finally reached its inevitable state, the state to which his mind had already relegated it. It is clear that the first is the way of suffering, while the second is the way of peace.

My relationships are already broken, my job is broken, my peace is broken, my heart is broken, my coffee cup (his name is Bucky) is broken, my phone is broken, my health is broken, my glassses are broken, my love is broken, harmony is broken, community is broken, my feeling of security is broken, life is broken. I don't intend to give up on any of these. On the contrary, I will cherish them, hold them that much more closely to my heart. They are precious in their unbroken state precisely because I have allowed them to be broken in my mind. When they break, when my brother can't hear me, when my sister is silent, when I am stolen from, when I know how different my work is (and how much I grieve what it used to be),  I can say to myself, "Yes, yes, this is how it always was, and I had the good fortune for a time to experience these things in their unbrokenness. What a lucky man I am!" When I can do this, when I can say, in all sincerity, "It is enough", in that moment I have reached the end of suffering.

Uncertainty

There's a lot going on right now but it's difficult to know how to write about it here, at least without sounding like I'm whining.  I'm not  whining. No, really....

I am reminded by a loved  one that getting things out of my head is always helpful, no matter what. On the other hand, I don't want to feel as  if I am vomiting all  over these pages as a way of making myself feel better. Nonetheless, here goes:

• The nature of my work is changing. 


• My son and his wife are moving away. This is a good thing—she is going to graduate school—but Michigan is a long, long, long way from here.


• My mother has been  in a skilled nursing facility for several weeks getting IV antibiotics for a persistent infection. She's home now, but is still not entirely well. Both of my parents are just plain old. Meanwhile, my shoulder has been giving me trouble, making me feel as if I am getting there myself.


• My friend Debbi is dying.


• I have a coworker who's husband is going through much the same process that Debbi has, but he's only at the beginning.


• My relationship with my wife is shifting. Of course, this happens all the time, as anyone in a long-term relationship can attest. But the big changes are more noticeable and the big, noticeable changes come to pass when big events intervene.


• I have lots of committments to travel, pretty much entirely around my family. These are all good things—my parents, my brother's birthday, visiting my son and his wife (and their lovely kitties, to which I am both deeply attached and seriously allergic, an interesting combination). It is all very good and seriously stressful in aggregate.


• When I am stressed (no surprise here) I tend to eat to excess. As I have shared before, I am not an eat-the-whole-cake kind of overeater. To borrow from  the lexicon of alchoholism, I am a maintenance overeater, not a binger. Which has its downside in my ability to remain in denial about it while I am stuffing my face. And (this is key) my lack of discipline about my eating actually adds to my stress rather than relieving it. In the moment it feels good, but then the feeling  of chaos that comes with being so out of control just adds to the stress.


• OK, and this is the hardest one to write about: I just don't feel very connected to my fellow human beings. My communication with family, coworkers and friends is cursory and strained much of the time, when it happens at all. I yearn for more meaningful contact in my life and fly around trying to be all things to all people falling short (I mean, who wouldn't?)

I have nicknamed all this The Five D's: Distance, Dissolution, Disease, Disability, and Death. A cheery group. The point here is, though, that these happen to us all and happen all the time. We are all moving away from each other, if not geographically, then emotionally. We are also all moving toward each other; it is a shifting dance. Dissolution, Disease, Disability, Death—these are in the nature of what it is to be alive, at least if one does not die young. We must all face the dissolution of who we are today in order to become who we will be tomorrow. That it happens gradually for most of us is no proof against having to face the reality of it.

I know that much of what goes on with me is a lack of trust. My meditation group was talking about this just the other day. I don't trust easily and do so rarely. I have pretty good experiential proof that people are not trustworthy. Life itself is one patch of shifting sand after another; it's hard to even trust the ground upon which I stand. Which is the whole point! Yes, the Buddha would say, yes, now you've got it! Nothing is substantial, all is shifting, cloudlike, unable to support your weight. Lie back. There is nothing to do. Nothing to be. Nothing to become but free. It is enough.