But It's Still Work

I have been writing quite a bit lately about letting go, which sounds so easy. And it is easy, once we get past all of the things that stand in the way. But getting past those things requires an enormous amount of work.

Now, why should this be? I have been curious about this question for as long as I remember. Why are we not just born with an innate sense of the value of letting go of all those things that keep us from happiness and joy? Is there some adaptive reason why we can't just begin life as wise beings?

I think there is. Of course, some people are born more wise than others (I have no idea why that might be so, though it seems to be), but all of us have to go through the maturation process of separation from our parents and making our way in the world, which is, in a word, terrifying. It might also be wonderful, exciting, and cool, but it is nonetheless terrifying. We respond to that terror with ways of coping which make life more bearable, but which also isolate us, place barriers between ourselves and others and also between ourselves and the naked truth.

Babies are born with an utter openness, which they then lose. Those of us seeking freedom later in life must work to get that openness back. But it would be futile to hang on to that infantile openness, because only with experience can we gain wisdom. And it is only when the openness is combined with wisdom that it can actually lead anywhere worth going. Freedom without wisdom is empty, even dangerous.

But what exactly is the work we have in front of us? That is, perhaps, the most important question we will ever ask ourselves. I suppose that for each of it the form this work takes is different, measured out not only on the basis of our preferences, but as a result of our individual experiences. Still, there is a common theme to the work we must do if we are to reach the freedom that is available to each of us.

I have come to believe that this work may have no better name than kindness. I am aware that this seems a bit wimpy; I could have said "justice" or "spiritual awakening" or "enlightenment", but I truly believe that these (and other such aspirations) are a result, more than anything, of kindness. Because if we aspire for ourselves, we are leaving behind all those poor, benighted others that don't achieve what we achieve. Only with a heart of kindness can we know that all must be brought along with us for spiritual attainment to be worthwhile.

Language, as always, is inadequate to express what exactly I mean by kindness. In Pali, the word metta is familiar to most practitioners of the Dharma. Metta is generally taken to mean "lovingkindness", but also translates (so I am told) as "unconditional friendliness" and "openheartedness", as well as other, similar terms. What would it be like to be entirely loving, friendly, and openhearted? What would it take to be thoroughly kind?

What would be required is complete and unconditional acceptance of life as it is, of others as they are, of ourselves just as we are in this moment. What would be required is letting go, but doing so with unconditional love.

Does this sound impossible? It's not. It's unlikely, but not impossible. And the good news is that we can start absolutely anywhere. Try this: be the nicest person the grocery store clerk encounters all day. Just do that. It is an act of love. It is openheartedness. It is metta. It is not only the road to ultimate peace, but the road to true freedom, what we choose to call nirvana. We can achieve this one grocery clerk at a time. Start there. Work your way up to the person you find most unforgivable. When we hate or resent, when we put any creature out of our hearts, we are only poisoning ourselves.

It is simple, truly it is. Not easy, but simple. Peace awaits us.

Incomplete: Completed

Something I quoted in last week's post (from the Third Zen Patriarch) has stuck with me and grown ever more significant:

The Great Way is not hard
For those who have no preferences.

No preferences? How could that possibly work? But I have an inkling, a nagging feeling, that this is one of the most important statements I have ever heard. I have been there, have at times had no preferences. This happens almost exclusively at meditation retreats and is most noticeable when doing mundane chores we call "yogi tasks".

Let me explain breifly about yogi tasks. No retreat center is set up to provide for every need of those who come there to meditate (we call ourselves yogis). Rather, part of the practice is to take on a chore to keep the place running. Some yogis clean bathrooms, others chop vegetables or wash dishes (I have done all these). When I am truly invested in the retreat, everything I do is enveloped in what has been called "choiceless awareness". Whether sitting on a cushion watching my breath or using an old toothbrush to scrub grout in a shower stall, I am equally at peace. I have no preference.

But real life is, alas, not a meditation retreat.

I am having a great deal of trouble at work. I am in conflict with someone and it seems to be getting worse. I don't want to get into all of the details or who is right or wrong (for one thing, how should I know?). What interests me here is meditating on how I can apply the Patriarch's prescription to this situation. How can I have no preferences here? I wish this person thought well of me. I wish our personalities did not clash. I wish I could come to work and be at peace. I wish I didn't feel as if my every action was under scrutiny. These are my preferences. And this much is certainly true: my preferences are causing suffering for me. If I could not prefer these things, I would not suffer from their lack.

But how is this "no preferences" dissimilar to indifference? No matter how far down the road to freedom I travel, I always run up against this question. How can I not prefer harmony to disharmony or pleasure to pain? The Buddha listed eight paired states (usually called vicissitudes) that can cause us disquiet:

Pleasure and Pain

Gain and Loss

Praise and Blame

Fame and Disrepute

his point being that preferring either of the pair will cause us to suffer.

But how can I have no preference when it comes to my own emotional pain? For example, how do I feel in this situation at work? Well, let's see...hurt, offended, angry, misunderstood, disrespected, threatened, afraid. All this week I have been using this situation as a meditation on the question of preference. Would it be possible for me to have no preference here? This is not an invitation to suppress these feelings; if I were able to have no preference, I wouldn't feel them to begin with.

Now, I am not asking whether or not this is possible—it clearly is. This lack of preference is, as the Patriarch said, The Great Way. I believe with all my heart that the Buddha had reached this plateau of choiceless awareness and that many people before and since have also achieved this state. So, a person can do this; the question is, can I? And how does one achieve this without becoming indifferent?

There is a classic Zen story of an abbot who heard a knock at his door and upon opening it was confronted with two angry grandparents. "You are a terrible man!" they said, holding an infant out to him. "Our daughter tells us it was you who fathered this child. We had so much respect for you and now that is all gone. Well, you take this child, he is yours!" And the abbot replied, "Ah, is that so?" and took the child.

A few weeks later the couple came to his door abashed and ashamed, saying, "Oh, great abbot, please accept our most abject apologies. The father of this child is a village boy. Our daughter was afraid to tell us so and blamed it on the first man she thought of. He is not your child, and we have come to take him home." To which the abbot replied, "Ah, is that so?" and gave them the child.

I have thought about this story a lot over the past few weeks. The central question facing the abbot, it seems to me is, who will be best served by whatever action he chooses to take? If he denies the accusation of paternity, will the child benefit? The young woman? Her parents? Clearly, none of them would. He cannot lie and admit to fathering the child, but he can minimize the harm he might do by simply accepting the fact of what they have to say and taking the child into his house and into his heart.

There is a limit to this tolerance, however. If his ability to carry out his duties or to remain a Zen priest were threatened by this accusation, he might have to consider differently. Not because this would be bad for him, but because it was his role to serve not just his monastery but the entire community. Under these circumstances, he might have to make clear that, although he was willing to accept the child into his care, he denied fathering him. But the most vital point here is that this choice would not be made on the basis of selfishness or self-interest, that in this regard he had reached the place where he truly had no preference.

We can also see from this story that having no preferences is clearly not indifference. The abbot could not be indifferent to the needs of others—the child, the grandparents, the mother, the monks at his abbey, the people of his community. He was able to be blind to his own preferences and in that way was far from indifferent, was, in fact, quite the opposite of indifferent—compassionate.

This is a question without easy answers. There are also many stories of those who purport to have achieved this freedom who, when tested, demonstrate that they have merely made themselves indifferent and, when pushed far enough, the true selfishness of their motives came to the fore. I don't pretend to have come close to having no preferences, but I see the outlines of freedom in the far distance. I intend to walk in that direction.

Incomplete

I have recognized but not entirely integrated into my thinking that accomplishing anything, any completion will not (cannot) provide gratification or catharsis. Like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the same hill over and over again, we complete nothing and operate only on the delusion we do. After all, in order to go on, each morning Sisyphus must have awakened to a sense of duty, not just futility. There is a forgetfulness in our Sisyphean natures that allows us to carry on.

This, then, is the profound error: to believe even in the possibility of completion. Which is not to be confused with completeness, or wholeness. It could be argued (and has been) that everything is already complete in its current state and requires no improvement. But completion is an entirely different matter, assuming as it does a beginning in a state of disorder and a restoration to a permanent state of order. But the nature of all things in change, and the idea of that which has been completed as immutable is in defiance of the nature of things to change, therefore antithetical. We may reach the end of something, but never its completion.

Why does this matter? Because in my life the form suffering takes is this delusion that Getting Things Done is the point. Since I cannot truly complete a damn thing, I am perpetually frustrated (I suffer). The fact is, I will never have enough time or energy to do the things I wish to do or even those I feel I must do.Yes, I know, anyone can point to counterexamples to contradict this philosophy: I graduated from college, completed my daily walk, cooked an entire meal and was done with it, but it is at a more profound level that completion never happens. As we have learned, so we forget and must relearn; to have any benefit, the walk must be taken again tomorrow; we will eat again, today's meal will be forgotten. So it goes. Yet I continue to seek this form of control, an attempt to build my our Valhalla (and anyone who knows the operas knows how well that turned out!)

The abandonment of the striving for completion (the perpetual to-do list in my head) is motivated in me, though, not by futility but through an awareness that there is something more worthwhile pursuing. Now that I am sensitized to it, I see it all the time, both in myself and others, this desire to control, to eke out territory and the abject misery the inevitable failure to do so engenders. It seems to me that I see on most of the faces around me a perplexed bafflement, genuine surprise that the failed strategies of yesterday didn't work today, either. I spent the weekend around fellow spiritual seekers and my perception was that even there, at every turn this was true, except in the teacher, who has clearly abandoned striving.

This feels like unsafe territory. It calls into question the underpinnings of how I have lived my life up to now. How does the old pop song go? "The things you think are precious I can't understand." It calls into question, in fact, the underpinnings of our very social fabric. We want The Answer or, worse yet, believe we know it and strive to impose it on others. But it seems we have not been asking the right question, so the answer must be false. And if the question is, how can I be infinite? Or, what is the nature of love without limit? it becomes clear how meaningless an Answer can be.

But things are not hopeless; quite the opposite. The abandonment of the urge for completion could be the ultimate freedom. More next week.

Tigers

Nazradin the Holy Fool was once found outside his house throwing garlic around. His neighbor was incredulous and asked him what in the world he thought he was doing. "Why," said Nazradin, "I am spreading this garlic about to fend off  tigers." "You idiot," replied the neighbor, "there are no tigers in this part of the country." "Ah, ha, so you can see," said Nazradin, "how well it works!"

I do this. My tigers are different beasts—the opinions of others, illness, aging, work stress, concern for my parents, money. And my garlic is worry, habitual behaviors, compulsiveness, the urge to complete tasks I have assigned to myself. And when the outcomes are good, I credit what I have done. When the outcomes are less desirable, well, life is just not very fair.

I have noticed another tendency in myself recently. I began to think that life is full of booby traps. I have plenty of evidence: I pull down a book and another falls down. I walk down the street and the sidewalk reaches up to trip me. I go to work and the ideas that others come up with to help guide my work are intended not to help but to obfuscate. I take the fork from the drawer and a spoon comes with it. I am in a hurry and all the lights are red. But I have a solution: if I can only be meticulous enough in all my actions, I can avoid mishaps. When I can't, the world is out to get me. Or something like that.

One of the most important teachings I have absorbed from the teachings of the Buddha is that It's Not Personal. How odd that I, that any of us, should believe that, out of 7,000,000,000 people on the planet, the forces of the world should be aligned against (or for) any one of us. It is the ultimate egotism. Not to mention the fact that, you know, these things just happen. Gravity is in force. The string from one thing gets caught on the clasp of another and pulls it. It is the nature of strings and clasps. This may inconvenience me (if I choose to think of it that way), but it's not a Worldwide Vendetta Against Me. The Buddha said that this egocentrism, this assumption that we are the center of the universe, even our own personal universe, is a primary source of suffering.

There is no more certain sign of spring for me than when the robins begin to guide me. Surely you have experienced this: a robin will perch on the sidewalk or a nearby fence and allow you to get quite close, closer than at any other time of year. It will then hop away several feet and wait for you to follow. Eventually, you will have followed far enough and it will fly away. What it is doing is pretending to be vulnerable in order to lead you away from its nest. I feel like saying to the silly bird, "As if!" As if, first of all, I am any threat to you or your nest; as if I am stupid enough to be misled by you, as if I walked your direction in pursuit of you. But from the robin's perspective, of course, the subterfuge works perfectly; I do, after all, move on. Just like the dog that barks so you will be frightened away and then, sure enough, you go on past.

I do this, too. I bark to protect myself when there is no real threat. I must be right or I am wrong which, though it seems obvious,  isn't really so. Sometimes things just are and there is no value associated with them.  Like the robin, I manipulate a situation to my supposed advantage, then take credit for it when it would have come out that way in any case. I have a friend who believes the world is essentially an unsafe place. There is plenty of evidence, of course: rapes, murders, gunmen, fires, floods, earthquakes, tornados, stalkers, thieves, con artists and war. But there is more safety here than danger. There is more kindness than cruelty, more love than hate, more courage than cowardice, more openheartedness than greed. When I, when any of us, find ourselves assuming the worst and thinking that way of thinking can make us happy or even safe, we are looking in the wrong place for what we most desperately want. Why would we do this?

There is another story of Nazradin. He was under a streetlight in front of his house on his hands and knees. One of his friends came by and asked what he was doing. "I have lost my keys," he replied, "and cannot get into my house". "Oh, my," said the friend, let me help you." After searching fruitlessly for a while, the friend asked, "So, where exactly did you lose your keys, my friend?" "Oh," said Nazradin, "in that alley over there." "What? What's that you say? Well, then why in the world are we looking over here." "Well," said Nazradin, "the light is better here."

It is enough.

A Spiritual Giant

I sometimes feel as if I am misrepresenting myself in this blog as some kind of spiritual giant, perhaps giving the impression that I am serene and peace-loving, that I never create discord and am never in conflict in my heart. None of this is true. I struggle a lot. I am very judgmental and believe myself to be right most of the time. I think your opinion is based in ignorance and that if I can just educate you adequately you will change your mind to my way of thinking. (Arrogant much?) Anger seems to be on my back burner much of the time. I am frustrated by work and family struggles.

If only you knew how ____________ I am! (Take your pick: sad, clever, intelligent, loving, bad, angry, depressed, wonderful).

I am confused. A lot. When I feel confused or frustrated I resort to anger. Quite often. I am deeply imperfect. I sometimes feel deeply guilty about all this. So what gives me the notion that I can write a blog about things like spiritual awareness? I struggle with this question, not so much as it regards me (I already know how imperfect I am so am not too worried about it; besides, you can choose to read it or not), but as it pertains to other spiritual teachers. I look at them and see, in some cases, anger, in others, intolerance, in yet others, egregiously bad behavior and think, what business do they have being teachers?

This reminds me of a story I heard about Sharon Salzberg, a prominent American meditation teacher. When she was seeking to be ordained as a teacher by her master (I think it was Sayadaw U Pandita, but I'm not sure), she was very young (in her early 20s) and he noted that, asking something along the lines of, "Surely at your young age, you could not have realized the end of suffering." To which she responded, "No, but I know with great certainty that there is an end to it", which answer fully satisfied him.

I know there is a path. I know that the terminus of the path is the end of suffering. I also know that every waystation along the path is a place of greater peace, filled with light, kinder, less judgemental. I (like everyone else, I suspect) wish the end of the path would arrive sooner, or at least that I could get close enough to be less of a grump, less uncertain, less sad. But that's not the way it works. I am on this path. This path is a good path. I hope with all my heart that others will want to pursue this path. That is why I write about it. Not because I am near the end of it, but because I know where it leads and that it is a place of peace, harmony, balance, caring, openheartedness, kindness, generosity, and deep faith in the rightness of the world as it is. And because I have seen progress, in myself and in others. It is enough.

Put the Lime in the Coconut

My visit to the doctor last week yielded some fairly ambiguous results. I am, despite my best efforts, getting older (go figure). I have nothing seriously wrong with my shoulder, which is, of course, good news, but also means that all I can do about it is work hard with a physical therapist. Damn. One can always hope for a quick fix, eh?

My labs told me pretty much what I already knew. I am what I call "pre-pre-diabetic," meaning the labs that measure such things say I am not yet there—in fact not even very close—but am trending in the wrong direction. Whereas my fasting glucose was just barely outside the range of normal, I would not consider myself in no danger whatsoever unless my result were smack dab in the middle of normal. I find little consolation in a result that was just barely on the other side of desirable. As I mentioned in my last post, my HDL was also slightly low. That does not bode well for the future, either. I am only 56 so must assume that, if nothing changes, I will eventually be facing larger problems.

*Sigh*

Of course, my immediate response is panic. I must eliminate all bad foods, all sugar, all fatty foods, all saturated fat....Silly, of course, especially the elimination of saturated fat, at least a small amount of which is essential to my physical well-being. When the small mind is in charge, nothing will do but an all-out assault on the Problem, whatever it may be.

But what is most fascinating for me is the shift in my relationship to food in a broader sense. This has been the theme of much of this blog. It is clear that I, that most of us, do not use food merely for sustenance. It is a social force, a source of comfort, a pleasure, a joy. Fat and sugar are two of the surest sources of pleasant food experiences. Nothing inherently wrong with any of this, of course. But when one's health is impacted, whether that health be spiritual or physical, different choices must be made. And from the point of view of the Dharma it is in facing those choices that the rub comes in.

The questions become these: am I living my life in full awareness of my relationship to food? Or do I wander through life trying to use food to solve insoluble problems? Is my response to discomfort (pain, undesired emotions, stress, unhappiness) to reach for food, as if it could take this away? Am I, in other words, hungry for something other than food and trying to use food to feed that hunger? Am I eating with mindfulness or eating to mask things of which I ought to be mindful? In response to these realizations, am I going overboard in the other direction, into the heedlessness of obsession over "healthy" foods? (I put that word--healthy--in quotes because if I run after bodily health at the expense of my spiritual growth, that is far from any kind of health I truly desire).

The even more significant question is this: why am I doing all this? Why should I struggle to achieve any understanding of this or any mastery over these impulses if the outcome is nothing other than more struggle at the next level? The Buddha had a vital and unequivocal answer: spiritual attainment is possible for all of us, in this very lifetime. The impression is sometimes given that in order to achieve anything like enlightenment, one must strive for lifetimes upon lifetimes. This may be true. On the other hand, there are many stories in the life of the Buddha where he speaks a few words and people are struck enlightened, just like that.

Perhaps it would be helpful to define what is meant by enlightenment, at least in the way I am using it. Enlightenment is a state of being in which there are no preferences, no reactivity either for or against, complete and utter acceptance of the way things are. It is ultimate peace and serenity. But it is not passive; far from it. Enlightenment is total engagement in the ways of the world with a loving heart that does not judge but seeks to nudge others toward the ways of peace, justice, and harmony, all in the service of guiding them toward their own enlightenment and toward the enlightenment of yet others. The Bodhisattva (an enlightened being) does not sit idly by when violence, injustice, or prejudice rears its head, but works in ways that are loving and kind to change them, reflecting back their opposites (gentleness, justice, inclusion) as an antidote to the poisons that threaten well-being and peace. Enlightenment sees these unskillful mindstates and actions not as evils but as unwitting barriers to ultimate joy. Both victim and victimizer are struggling in a darkness that can be illuminated.

To get back to the question of whether it is possible (or even desirable) to achieve enlightenment in a flash, or whether it takes lifetimes: the answer is yes. Either is possible. Any time span in between is possible. But here's the kicker—as can be deduced from the definition above: one of the keys to enlightenment is not desiring it. Since striving toward this state is antithetical to the state itself (even the idea of "toward" is inaccurate), it is impossible to set a goal of being enlightened and then to work diligently for it. At this point, the small mind wants to throw in the towel and give up. What? A pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that I cannot work toward? Isn't enlightenment like the PhD of spiritual growth; I jump through enough hoops and pass sufficient trials and then am awarded the crown?

Well, no. In fact, desire is one of the barriers to enlightenment. So, what's a human to do? I believe with all my heart that the journey toward this ultimate mindstate beings with acceptance. We start there and work from that solid base. (A dictionary definition of acceptance I like: "to receive something offered, especially gladly"). We are as we are. Life is as it is. Reacting against (or for) any of it only creates suffering, divides the world into the camps of "wanted" and "unwanted", with us as both the arbiter and the one who strives incessantly to have the one and reject the other. The state of acceptance is a radically different way of viewing the world.

In my mind's eye I see a man who imagines himself in a pit. Out of the sky food is constantly falling. As they fall into his pit, the man immediately evaluates these foods as good and stores them away or as bad and throws them out. He does this constantly. He does this so assiduously and unceasingly that he never has any time to enjoy those tasty morsels he has stored away. His judgment is so clouded by prejudice and ignorance he often throws away the very best that is offered. What the man in the pit doesn't realize is that he is not in a pit. He is on a vast plain, infinite in its scope. He is in no danger of being overwhelmed by what falls his way; he can let it be. He need not judge what is good or bad, but can taste of each and find that which is pleasing or instructive or freeing. Some of what he tastes is bitter, but he need not reject anything on this basis. He can ask one simple question: is this nourishing? And he will find that all of it is. It is enough.

(P.S. If you find the title of this post perplexing, that's the prescription the doctor gave in a Harry Nilsson song).

Weight loss reflections

I started this blog with the intention of tracking my efforts to lose weight. A couple of posts back, when I was talking about what I eat and why, I said that I would revisit this topic, if only briefly. As those of you who have been following this blog for awhile are aware, I have shifted my focus more to the Dharma side of things and have de-emphasized the weight loss angle. Why?

Well, it's not because I no longer think that losing some of this excess weight would be wonderful. I am aware of the health consequences of carrying even a relatively small amount of extra poundage. But here's the thing: I am simply not willing to live my life under some sort of cloud, constantly concerned about every extra pound or calorie. Put another way, I would rather die a fat, diabetic, hypertensive mess than spend the precious hours of my life worrying about my weight. Whenever I hear myself, internally or aloud, speaking in martial terms (fighting weight, struggling with it, wrestling it), I recoil. I don't want to live my life in any more struggle than is called for. Just day-to-day living is hard enough.

On the other hand, I treasure discipline and commitment. And by saying I treasure them, I mean that I find great pleasure in them, a greater pleasure than I do in eating junk, for instance. Because of this, in a normal, average week I follow the strictures of my 1800 calorie regimen six days, giving myself Sundays off. When I do this, I steadily lose weight. But many of my weeks are not "normal". When I go on vacation or to visit my parents I find it very difficult to measure and parcel out everything I eat, especially since much of the time is taken up in social eating. Not that I am one of those who, when I feel released from obligation, go buy a box of Twinkies and eat the whole thing; I have never been that kind of binge eater. But a few chips here, a latte instead of drip coffee, a cookie or cinnamon roll or two and pretty soon I have put on an extra pound or five. And since I am now visiting my family once a month, when I factor in my vacations and other time off, my "abnormal" days begin to outnumber the "normal" ones. With the decreased metabolism of a 56-year-old, I have found that, even with moderate eating, if I am not ever-vigilant, I can gain up to 10 pounds in a week.

My friends Barbara and Jim say that when they decided to take off some extra weight they always took their own food wherever they went, even out to dinner with friends or on vacation, if they thought they would not be able to calculate accurately the "cost" of the food they would otherwise be eating. That would be very difficult for me, but I get the point. When I eat with my parents, for instance, we tend to eat at places that specialize in meat and potatoes types of meals. Nothing wrong with that, and they like pretty decent places, but for a vegetarian, lean meals are hard to come by in these restaurant. I'm not complaining, but it does make me wonder how to deal effectively with such times.

Kathy and I just came back from a mini-vacation to Doe Bay on Orcas Island in Washington state.

Doe Bay

It was beautiful and restful and damn near perfect, at least for us. We didn't do much, really, though we went on a couple of hikes in two different state parks on the island. I did not pork out while we were there. We had a couple of meals in the restaurant attached to the resort, but mostly cooked and ate moderately in our own little cabin. Still, I would not be at all surprised to find I gained between five and ten pounds over those five days.

Our sweet little cabin, Chakra

Don't get me wrong. This is not a "problem" for me. I refuse to let it be. But it is a curious conundrum and one with which my thoughts are often taken up. I wonder what kind of alternative strategy I could use for those times when I am out of town or relaxing that would not make these times less interesting or fun but would still allow me to remain on the path to good health? I guess I will find out.

Deep Water

I absorbed a disappointment at work the other day. A situation I thought would probably go a certain way took a twist that left me with a painful choice. What I decided, though I am sad about it, seems like the right way to go for the peace and well-being of the clinic. But what I really want to explore is this feeling of disappointment. It served to coalesce several lines of thought I have been focusing on recently. The first is a question I have been pondering for about as long as I can remember pondering anything:

Why does it seem to be impossible for us to be born happy, live happily and die the same way?

Let me first say that I have always had a certain mistrust for the idea that unhappiness is a necessary precursor to happiness. This seems to be a concept which many people take as a given, that in order to appreciate joy we must have sorrow and that the capacity for one is roughly proportional to the other. I find this, at best, reductive and facile. To my mind, it is akin to saying that one must live in the Third World to appreciate living in the developed world, or one must be divorced to appreciate marriage. And once we think about it seriously, are we really suggesting that the more we suffer, the more capacity we have for happiness? I find this ridiculous on the face of it. If I had a burn over 90% of my body would I therefore inevitably have an absolutely enormous capacity for joy (redcutio ad absurdum)? Of course, it's perfectly possible that this idea of the need for suffering in order to comprehend happiness might nonetheless be true, but I have never seen any convincing evidence to support it. (Though it is essential to the development of compassion, there is no denying that).

To my mind, the more important question is this: is it theoretically possible to live a life without emotional pain? I know it's not likely, but is it possible? We have all known people who seem to have a greater than average capacity for finding what is pleasant in life. Is there a place on the far end of that continuum where a person goes through an entire life without suffering?

I would contend that the answer is no. But why is this? I think it must be because in order to be living beings we must grow, and the capacity to grow comes about through butting up against our limitations, either external or internal. When this happens, we become frustrated and unhappy. We seek a solution or response that will alleviate this suffering. But the suffering must come first.

Let's take an early-in-life example. An infant is perfectly content to be fed, changed, burped, held, and put down to sleep. (I know, I know, they also cry a lot, but mostly they are brought back to contentment fairly easily). But at some point the baby "aspires" to something more, wishes to see more or move more. This is a frustrating impulse when the child does not yet have the capacity for controlled voluntary movement. The frustration leads to repeated attempts to get past the frustration by developing the skill required to overcome the barrier to the fulfillment of desire. A more subtle example from adulthood is when we wish for things to be a certain way in a milieu (work, for example), but the reality of personalities, administrative limits, and many other factors makes this impossible. This frustration is compounded by the fact that each person with whom one works (or lives, or whatever) also has a vision of a perfect environment which inevitably does not coincide with yours. Thus the development of a physical skill or the persuasion of language will not suffice in these situations to overcome suffering. Instead, the growth must be in the emotional and/or spiritual realm, where we learn to choose between acceptance, confrontation, or escape. As one of my mentors said, in every difficult situation there are only three constructive actions: change it, leave it, or accept it. We can all think of several other responses (bitch about it, get angry, hate the perceived perpetrator), but these are more or less purely destructive.

Another source of suffering to consider: when we love we will suffer. The Loved One will leave or disappoint or die. This is inevitable unless you die first, in which case the other person (or animal or whatever) in the love equation will suffer. Suffering is simply part of love. To my way of thinking, this fact deepens and reifies what passes between two or more people. But this is probably a subject for a post all its own.

So suffering is essential to our growth as thinking, feeling, loving human beings. Though some people seem to be born wiser than others, it still is true that every one of us must go through this process of emotional growth (anger, frustration, consideration, formulation of a possible response, trying out that response, evaluating and deciding on a future course if that one doesn't work). Wisdom simply isn't possible without it.

But wisdom is not the only outcome of suffering tempered by wisdom. I have been dealing with grief in several forms lately and while, if given the choice, I would have selected some other state of being, there is a distinct upside. Wednesday, when I was actively grieving the lost opportunity at work, I realized that the feeling of grief seems to open up a trap door to a reservoir of comfort. This is hard to describe, but I suspect most if not all of us have experienced what I am talking about. In Sailing Home, Norman Fischer speaks eloquently of seeing "to the bottom of the feeling, through the turbulent waters caused by your stickiness, to the calm clear depth". It is as if we have been living in the parched top six inches of our lives and only by going to depth, miles down—which requires sadness, anger, grief, pain, despair, betrayal, some strong stimulus—can we find the cool underground stream of our selves, a flow of being we hadn't even guessed existed. This is why, as I said in my last post, the way out is down. We must discover what is down there in order to go on; we cannot survive on bread alone, but must have the water of our deepest emotions to thrive. I suspect this is why, no matter how intelligent and well-informed they may be, young people (except those who have suffered out of proportion to their age) still seem rather callow in the view of those who are more mature. I'm still not recommending suffering as a hobby, but it does seem to have its uses.

Which leads back inevitably to the Four Noble Truths the Buddha propounded. The first is that there is suffering (or dissatisfaction). That reflects the discussion above, wherein suffering is an essential part of the human experience. The Buddha is not saying that all suffering is unnecessary, but that it exists for all of us. He could have stopped there; perhaps the Third Noble Truth might then have been, "So get over it". But instead he proposed a radical idea, that there could be an end to suffering. Considering what I have just been saying, doesn't this mean that we would stop growing at the point we stopped suffering? Not necessarily. What I think the Buddha meant is that suffering is useful to a point and then no further, that, in fact, there comes a time when we must transcend suffering in order to continue to grow. This reminds me a bit of how one must treat orchids; once the flowers have finished blooming, the entire stalk must be cut off so a new one can grow. But if you also cut off all the leaves and dig the plant up by the roots, it will just die. So a certain degree of pruning (suffering) is essential to our flowering, but then we must leave well enough alone and go deeper. This is the core of what we are doing in meditation and in studying the Dharma. True wisdom is coming to the point of no preference, where grief is not bad and joy is not good, but all is acceptable. That, I believe, is nirvana. 

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?

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.

Up In The Air

Thursday, June 21, early morning: I begin this post high up in the air over the flatlands west of the Rocky Mountains. Soon I will be in Denver, then on to Milwaukee, where my mother-in-law is dying.

I suppose I should apologize for writing so much the past few weeks about death, but I won't. The way I have been thinking of it is this: if I were in the circus, I would write about clowns and elephants. As it is, I happen to be in a time of dying and decreasing function in those about me, so that is what is on my mind.

I am feeling dislocated and anxious, though I suspect this is mostly to do with getting up so early. The day after the longest day of the year and I still arrived at the airport in the dark. Of course, there's also the fact of the suddenness of this trip; this time yesterday I wasn't even at work yet and it was only after lunch it was decided I should come. It's been a whirlwind. But I feel as if I am heading toward something useful at last. My birth family has been in an uproar the past few days over my parents' diminished capacity, my wife has been in Milwaukee while that situation is unfolding, and the friend I wrote about in my last post is facing all that. Meanwhile I sat at home doing housework—useful but feeling irrelevant.

(Speaking of that friend, I might as well admit here to an insecurity: so few people commented on my last post that I fear you hated it; mostly I fear that the person it was about disapproves of it. I have thought of no reason why I should regret it, but I carry the fear anyway. Not your problem, dear reader; saying it in this post is just a way of trying to keep it from clanging about in my head...)
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Is it perhaps selfish to want to be relevant to other people's process? But of course it is my process, too, and I want to be present for it.
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Late morning: Now up in the air between Denver and Milwaukee. Nothing to see but agricultural fields all the way to the horizon, and beyond, I imagine. In a certain way this is dull and repetitive to look at, but astonishingly ingenious in design and execution. To think that all of that land was forced into some sort of fecundity by human hands in one way or another—if not directly, then through the machines they brought into being—is unnerving and inspiring. It is difficult for me to imagine the vastness of it until I am up here like this. I especially like the circular fields, clearly made that way to accommodate straight-line sprinklers on a central pivot. (Though I can’t help but wonder about the wasted space that making a circle in the middle of a square implies. I also wonder: if you build your farmhouse within the circle, if you forget to turn the sprinklers off or are unexpectedly called away, do they run into your house, or what? Or are they more sophisticated than that?).

I think I’m looking down on the Mississipi River now. It’s big and long and water, in any case. I figure I’m in about the right place....

My friend Tamara reminded me that the process of being a witness to the life-transitions of other people is one of watchful waiting, of just being with rather than doing. I admitted to one of my friends yesterday (before it had been decided I would make this trip) that I organize and clean and tidy because I believe, somewhere inside me, that no one will be hurt or die as long as I keep things neat. I can keep us all safe with a good vacuuming and reorganizing of the paint shelf. Let me tell you, the tool area in the basement has never looked so good. 

Heather, my spiritual mentor, reminds me to let my grief and pain be embodied, to know what it feels like. The small mind, she warns, wants nothing more than to make it seem as if the concerns, routines and tasks it comes up with are all there is, and that a solution to some problem or other can be found in paying attention to that persistent voice telling me to strive and strive and strive. I know it isn’t so, but it feels like I am doing something, anything, to ward off the fear. This isn’t fear of death, mind you, at least I don’t think so, not my death or anyone else’s. This is fear of disruption, of my comfortable little world being challenged. This is precisely what the Buddha spoke of in his first teachings, that the nature of suffering is this desire to keep things just the same, to fend off the uncomfortable while accepting only what I like. It’s not that he thought this a bad idea, necessarily, but recognized its absolute futility and the inevitable frustration (suffering) of being stymied in that desire over and over again.

Seeing small towns from the air makes clear what we mostly (as a species) come late to understand: after we have cut down all the trees and cleared the land for agriculture, in the places we live we want those trees back and must replant them, this time in neat little rows that define the streets where we plunk our houses down. This seems to be true everywhere in these flat, fertile lands except where the rivers flood, which look to be places where the trees have been allowed to grow undisturbed; from a farmer's perspective the marshy ground good for little else, no doubt.
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Evening: Now in Milwaukee. This truly is only a bearing witness. Oh, there are a few things to do, a few opinions to voice, a concern or two. But mostly it is a reflection: what a miracle this life is, what a mystery the infolding of our consciousness as it ends. She was here, now mostly she is not, though her body lives on and now and then she rises to the surface (when she recognized I had come Jeanette said, "Well, look who's here!") but mostly not. She is gone and not gone. We spoke of the possibility of chemically inducing a coma to make her less restless and (presumably) more comfortable, but her daughters didn't want that. The distinction is subtle but real to us. What is being here and not being here? Where is that line? Why does the body go on when the spirit is ready to go? For that matter, what influence does the spirit have on the automatic processes of the body? Some, we know, but not total hegemony.

So I will bear witness. I will be helpful where I can, but mostly bear witness. It feels a bit lame to end such a post in such a way, without any profound Buddhist sentiment about death and dying, but there it is. Bearing witness and opening my heart—to Jeannette and to those who love her, to the process she has begun and that only she can decide how to end—that's all I am here to do.

I will share this from Pema Chodron, though:

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.

She, dying

She is dying of a brain tumor and decided this week to throw in the towel; not in defeat (she is the reigning champion) but exhausted and realistic. She will be (has been) written up in medical journals for the twists and turns her disease has taken. Small comfort, if any. She never could do things the simple way.

When I heard from her about hospice, end-of-life care, all that, I wrote, "Funny, what wells up in me immediately upon reading this is that though I have acclimated myself fairly thoroughly to the process of your dying, there was one synapse that never closed: at the end of the process you will be dead. I had not gotten there yet, apparently." To which she replied, "There is that. And the universe of love I will leave you with. Don't break it. Don't lose it. And please share."

She was a dancer. Still is, but when we met she was all grace and poise and fluid motion. She is sharp of wit and tongue. She praises with the extravagance with which she damns. We have known each other more than 35 years. I was in love with her once and still love her deeply. We have not always been the best of friends (life and distance intruded, my own illness, my divorce, my anger and low self-esteem; now it all seems sordid and vain, silly, even, but felt like life and death at the time), but have never been less than true loves for all that.

Our children grew up far apart yet became close friends.

In truth, this feels like the end of her and not the beginning of some grand, new adventure. I love the idea of karma, of rebirth and grace, heaven even, more than I have faith in a hereafter. I have said for some time that I don't not believe in anything: ghosts, UFOs, fairies, elves, time travel, yeti, well-intentioned Republicans, Nessie, an afterlife, an end to war, the perfectability of a human life—I have seen precious little evidence of any of these, yet who am I to pass final judgment on things of which so many are convinced? After all, I believe in quarks, though those who have seen one are far outnumbered by those who have seen Bigfoot. But wishful thinking will not do when I think of her, think of her dying, think of her dead.

Did I mention she was a dancer?

Life when we met was thrilling and new, an adventure waiting to happen, pregnant with the possibility of glory, fame and fulfillment. We were vain and thrilled, the way only twenty-somethings can be, before reality and disappointment, then achievement of different joys and ultimate contentment took the place of our exuberance. We were young, attractive, restless, cocksure, judgmental, a little bit ruthless, and free.

Had we known about the future, about the child who died, my alcoholism, mortgages, jail, ailing parents, distances, struggles to survive and thrive, what would we have done? Laughed, no doubt. Said, "bring it on!" There was and is a fierceness in our hearts that dares the world to challenge us in ways we can't handle. It has done its best to do its worst and we are still standing.

And dancing.

Happy Day!

It is my birthday today and find I am thinking of death. These two facts might not be related, but they might. I am only 56 years old and in good health, but I am not young by most non-geriatric measures of such things. I am certainly nearer death from any cause than I am to birth, or at least I hope so (112 seems more than a little like showing off).

I suspect this maudlin turn has more to do with the fact that my wife is away helping her mother, who is dying, and that I spent Saturday evening in an emergency department with my father. (Nothing serious, in his case). I was also this weekend with my mother, who is slowly losing her wits. So the end of life is on my mind as I celebrate the anniversary of the beginning of mine. But, you know what? It is a beautiful day today in Seattle and I have the day off. There is wash on the line and frozen custard in my belly. For a grim reaper contemplater, I am in a very cheerful frame of mind.

Western Buddhists face an interesting quandary when it comes to death. Most of us exist somewhere on the skeptical end of the spectrum when it comes to the idea of reincarnation, yet the Buddha made it central to many of his teachings. In particular, the teaching on karma assumes the ability of the fruits of our actions to follow us from one incarnation to the next. The teachings also face us with an interesting conundrum: if there is no separate self, how can a self go from one life to the next? Isn't this a basic contradiction within the teachings?

My own skepticism is challenged by the fact that perfectly trustworthy people like the Dalai Lama speak of their former lives as if they were neighbors they spoke to yesterday—recalling events, personal items and conversations that no one else could have known about. The stories of his recognition of the personal effects of the previous Dalai Lama while he, the current Dalai Lama, was still a child are legendary. What to make of that?

I have long been of the opinion that karma is simultaneously among the most and least important of the Buddha's teachings. It is vital because of the need for a deep-seated integrity and morality it implies. But if we are good to each other only to score points on the Karm-O-Meter, then we really have no morality at all, only the fear of negative consequences being visited upon in a future existence. Seen this way, karma becomes much more like the literal Christian's version of sin and, like that philosophy it infantilizes us into creatures subservient to a set of rules declared from on high. Not very appealing.  We must make the choice to be moral for its own sake, it seems to me, and let the karma chips fall where they may.

The same is true, I think, of concepts like heaven or reincarnation. If I am the best person I can possibly be, then if there is a reward for that behavior then bully for me. And if there is not? It could never be a waste to be a good person, to be kind, generous and loving. How could I have any regrets if I have been that? And if you tell me that I needed to join your particular brand of belief in order to be truly saved, well, I didn't much want to be in that particular heaven with you anyway.

As for the seeming contradiction of the non-self being reborn as a new self, the scholars are clear that it is the very fact that we cling to the concept of a separate self that creates the karma which leads to rebirth. It is not for nothing that those who have reached Nirvana are called "non-returners".

I have lost much of my fear of death, but like most people fear dying badly, in confusion or pain. But even that fear is muted by the fact of living in this moment as the only moment I have. Nothing comforts me on a regular basis quite so much as meditation because it reminds me over and over the joy of being in this moment and no other. If I can die while I am dying and live while I am living, I will have done all I can do in this world. And if there is a next one for me, well, I guess I'll just have to do my best in this life to make the next incarnation a pleasant one. Perhaps I can spend a few centuries as a mountain; that might be good.

Eightfold Path: Wise Concentration

Thinking is essential to wisdom, but you cannot think your way to wisdom. This may seem a conundrum, but is actually the explication of a truth we know in our deepest selves but cannot always bring to the surface of our understanding.

When we are born, we do not have wisdom. Though some infants seem more wise than others, the judgment and awareness essential to wisdom can only arise through experience. Infants are information-gathering machines and it would be grand to have the capacity for taking in the world around us we did at that age. But eventually we accumulate enough awareness of the world to form opinions and strategies for navigating that world as we move into it as thinking beings. We encounter loss, pain, disappointment and limitations and must find our way through these. Thought and the formation of lasting impressions are essential to this process; otherwise we would simply repeat the same mistakes over and over without learning how to avoid them.

Eventually, though (for most of us, at least), this thought formation begins to feel unsatisfying. We sense that there is something more to the world, that its patterns and synchronicity cohere into more than the sum of its parts. We seek for this deeper meaning in a variety of ways, many of them futile and some of them destructive. Many get stuck in this stage. Some of us find a spiritual discipline which answers many of the nagging questions of wisdom's path. But inevitably we come up against the frontier beyond which thinking cannot take us further. This can be very frustrating. From our earliest thoughts until this moment, thinking has carried us through, kept us safe, given us the information we needed to negotiate the world. But it cannot take us further.

One metaphor which speaks to me is that of light. As we mature, we turn on more and more lights in our mind. We begin in darkness, lacking wisdom. Slowly we turn on lights as we learn. But the brightest of lights will never cut through the wall of our final darkness unless it is focused into a laser-like beam of unforced, unmitigated, unfiltered concentration.

This is an uncomfortable point in our development. We have always been able to think our way through any problem and find a solution. The powerful tool that is the mind has been our constant companion and surest safeguard against the depredations of the world. But now we have reached a point where the mind is no longer useful, where yet more thought will not lead us any closer to the naked truth we seek.

For this we turn to the power of concentration. Anyone who has practiced meditation for any time at all has had the experience of insight spontaneously arising when the mind is stilled. No matter what the specifics of our practice may be, if we focus our minds on a neutral object rather than on an object of inquiry, insight has the opportunity to arise. Without concentration, such an arising cannot take place—there is no room in our heads or our hearts for this to occur. The vacuum created in the absence of thought allows insight to arise.

This is illogical. (It just occurred to me when I wrote those words that Spock of Star Trek fame was very logical and because of this was sometimes not very wise). Logic is the purview of the mind. At some point in our lives we believe that logic holds the answers to all questions (most of us have encountered ten-year-olds who know everything because they have made this discovery). Coming up against the illogical barrier of the end of the usefulness of thought is very disconcerting. Nonetheless, in order to move beyond the land of limited wisdom, we must drop thought altogether.

Concentration is almost absurdly easy to develop in the short term, which is one of the reasons it may not seem very important to the thinking mind. All we need do is find an object upon which we can entirely focus our attention. The formula is simple: the more thoroughly we focus that attention, the more insight and its fruit, wisdom, can arise. We choose a neutral object about which we do not hold a strong opinion, such as the breath. (We can only imagine what would come of choosing something like our mothers or our jobs as the object of our attention; we hold many, many opinions about these and would spin off into thought and be entirely lost to concentration before we even began). There is nothing special about choosing the breath; it is constantly available and entirely neutral and therefore extremely useful for this. Other than our opinion that it is a good idea to keep doing it, we tend to accept breathing as it is.

The difficulty, if it can be called such, is that concentration on our object of attention cannot be sustained without vigorous, constant effort to train the mind to do so. As our practice progresses, we can sustain concentration more often and for longer periods. As we do this, we find that insight arises of its own accord. We are then on the road to wisdom. Every time a thought intrudes into our meditation, we gently turn our attention back toward the object of concentration. We do this over and over and over. This is compared quite often and (I think) appropriately to the training of a puppy. We ask the mind to sit. To stay. To heel. Over and over we gently, gently condition the mind to focus attention until (in theory, at least) this becomes second nature and our preferred state of being. Thinking can then become a tool we use when it is helpful but put on the shelf when it ceases to be so. Even when not in formal meditation we can return to untrammeled concentration except in those moments and situations in which thought is useful. This is the goal of this part of our practice, to come to the realization that there is a greater consciousness beyond the thinking mind. We have access to this at any time and under any conditions. But when the mind takes up so much of the foreground of our awareness, it can seem as if these thoughts are all there is. Concentration is the key that opens the door to the larger awareness, to freedom from compulsive thinking and to wisdom.

 

Retreat

I have been back from retreat for a few days. It always feels like a profound realization to do this and nearly impossible to say why. What do we do on retreat? We sit, we walk, we work, we eat, we sleep, we listen to instruction from a teacher, all while being as thoroughly conscious of what we are doing as we possibly can. So what?

Sitting meditation

It is immeasurably valuable to recognize the distinction between the small mind (mind, ego) and the larger mind (consciousness, awareness). The small mind plans and executes, is essential for day-to-day tasks. But the small mind has certain inherent limitations. It has little judgement and no wisdom. It has an unshakable belief in the proposition that getting things done is the essence of what it is to be a successful human being. In fact, it believes that the road to happiness, the only road to happiness, is in the doing of things, the achieving of goals, the reaching for and getting more, always more.

Now, one can see how practically necessary this small mind is. I could not write this blog, rent a car, brush my teeth, or lock the door without it. One of my former teachers tells of when he was a young monk and came back from Burma to the U.S. He was sitting in an airport, feeling all holy and above it all in his saffron robes. He went into a bathroom, used it, came back out and realized he had been in the women's restroom. It is wonderful to be immersed in consciousness, but the small mind is necessary to keep us from wandering away.

Eating meditation

 The larger consciousness contains and envelopes the small mind. It is expansive, vast, infinite. The space of the larger mind can absorb all the world has to offer without feeling cramped or crowded. It is ultimately accepting and benign. It is not spaciness or lack of awareness (despite the story above) but an acute realization of the underlying nature of things.

Here's the problem, though, and the crux of why retreat is so essential: the small mind believes it is in charge and that consciousness is superfluous, a luxury to be indulged after the to-do list is completed. This feeds into the Judeo-Christian sensibility in which many of us were raised ("finish your chores and you can have some dessert"). I would wager that nearly all persons in the West, and an overwhelming majority elsewhere, live with the belief that the small mind is all there is. Oh, we might touch something deeper from time to time: looking into the eyes of a newborn, standing by the sea, on top of a mountain, in true intimacy with another being, but there is an underlying assumption that this is extra and extraneous, not what life is really about.

Here's a question though: if happiness is just around the corner, why do we keep turning corners to find that it is just around the corner? This is dream logic, chasing the uncatchable unicorn but never giving up on the idea that it can be caught. Isn't it time we woke up?

Walking meditation

This is what retreat can demonstrate to us. When we can put down the lists and books and vapid speaking and smart phones and computers for a while we can clearly see that what creates all of the suffering in our lives is the fact that the small self is constantly yearning for the next thing to make it happy or fulfilled. It has an opinion on everything and everyone, is full of judgement and anger. It is constantly moving on to the next desire, even while still doing something else.

Remember that the Buddha said, "I have come to teach suffering and the end of suffering". He did not say, "I have come to teach suffering, the end of suffering, and how to be comfortable and charming and well-liked and successful". Here's the real truth: we will never, never, never, never make the small mind happy. It believes that after that ice cream cone it will finally be happy forever and has convinced us of this over and over, but it never is. Which is not to say there is anything wrong with ice cream, but it isn't really the answer to anything. Life is not about doing things, achieving things, or getting things. It is about opening your heart.

One of the qualities inherent to the small mind is extreme shortsightedness. Oh, yes, it plans for the future, but only with that extremely limited point of view which thinks that these plans will finally buy it the happiness it craves. Putting it in charge of our overall happiness is like putting a small child in charge of a nuclear power facility. The small mind does not have the perspective, experience, knowledge, or judgment to take on such a task. Eventually, inevitably, the meltdown will come.

A few things retreat is not: relaxing (it's hard work doing nothing), a time to figure things out (that's the small mind churning), social (noble silence includes avoiding eye contact as well as not speaking, writing, or reading—with some exceptions). It is fairly common for those who have never been on retreat to ask, "Don't you get bored?" Here is the truth of it, an insight that came to me on this retreat: only the small mind becomes bored. In fact, part of what we are doing with the repetitive tasks in a retreat—watching our breath, noting our steps while walking, being fully aware of what we are doing while eating—is giving the small mind a task that fully absorbs it so the larger mind has a change to emerge. In any case, though, the answer is, no, retreat is not boring. It is the most fascinating investigation one can do into what makes up this humanness with which we have been gifted.