This unrepeatble life

There was a Hassidic master of the late eighteenth century named Zusya of Anipoli.  He is portrayed in several Hassidic tales as humble and lighthearted. In one of the tales, told by Martin Buber in his Tales of the Hasidim (vol. 1, pg 251), Zusya was on his deathbed and those who were close with him came to be with him and to perhaps here his last words.  

Sometime during this process he is alleged to have said “When I get to the Heavenly Court they will not ask me “Why were you not one of the great masters like Moses?” They will ask me “Why were you not Zusya?” 

In what way are we not ourselves? 

We spend a lot of time lost in thought, and to even call it thought is often charitable. We also spend a considerable portion of life outside the body–not literately, of course.  

James Joyce, in one of his short stories in Dubliners, makes a mind-stopping observation about one of his characters: 

“Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.” 

I think what is being asked here is what if we are not truly living the life we were given? And what does this mean?  

As the year comes to a close, I think it might be beneficial to look back and ask to what degree were we living a little ways off from our life? 

How often do we give in to fear and slinker away from the being true to our self, from being intimate? How often do we given in to cynicism? To analyzing our life in terms of calculating the odds of gaining advantage or of losing ground?  

We can talk the talk, but walking the path means to be truly human, to really live this precious, unrepeatable life.  Buddhism challenges us to choose forbearance, patience and understanding over self-interest and quick solutions. The path prompts us to shake loose those aspects of our self which aren’t genuine. We get to know them very well when we take our seat and make a commitment to be with our selves.  

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience,” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote.  

The Zen teacher Cheri Huber, in Trying to be Human, tweaked this phrase a little when she wrote “we are not human beings trying to be spiritual, but spiritual beings trying to be human.” 

What if the true human being is utterly ordinary? Yet extraordinary in her utter simplicity and clarity of being? That’s the challenge and the invitation of maturing Dharma practice.

to care and not to care

From the poem Ash Wednesday, by T.S. Eliot–” teach us to care and not to care, teach us to sit still.”

Teach us to care about what’s important and not to care about what’s a waste of time.

From the Thai forest meditation teacher Achaan Dhammadaro:

“If people hate you, that’s when you are off the hook. You can come and go without having to worry about whether or not they’ll miss you or get upset at your going. And you don;t have to bring any presents for them when you come back. You are free to do as you like.”

Knowing that someone doesn’t like you, can we just not care and save our energy to care for things which aren’t a lost cause?

There’s a certain old stubbornness inside that just doesn’t want to let go sometimes, you know?

From a poem by W. H. Auden:

“We would rather be ruined than changed.

We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross

of the moment and watch our illusions die.”

Thankfully, our meditation practice reveals to us that climbing the cross of the moment and dying to our illusions doesn’t have to be such a heavy deal, although it probably feels that way for the first few months or years of our practice.

There’s a quiet contentment that comes when we stop taking ourselves so seriously.

Ram Dass offers this unabashed observation: “Speaking after 30 years of spiritual work, I haven’t got rid of a single one of my neuroses. But they don’t have the power to define me anymore.”

Wes Nisker observes: “After a few years of meditation practice, we can even learn to occasionally ignore ourselves, what a relief that can be.”

the conflict free mode

We have seen how widespread dissatisfaction and conflict are in our lives. We have also considered the possibility that dissatisfaction and conflict (dukkha in the language of early Buddhism) arise as a consequence of our reactive tendency to cling, grasp or push away at what is presented moment by moment through our senses.  

The Third Noble truth states that there is the very real alternative to this push/ pull life: a conflict free mode, unencumbered, free, the end of suffering in which the mind no longer creates problems.  

Sometimes our life is so filled with worry, preoccupation, and chatter that even reading a line or two about a “conflict free mode” strikes us as peculiar or irrelevant. Or perhaps it sounds like a pipedream. So we file it away under nice idea.  

The conflict free mode the third noble truth points out can sound even more outlandish when you read some of the dialogues in the early Buddhist texts about it. There is one exchange, between Sariputta (one of the Buddha’s most advanced follower) and a group of monks, in which Sariputta make reference to one of the Buddha’s statements that the conflict free mode (Nirvana) is happiness but not experiential happiness. One of the monks then asks Sariputta “How can something that is not experienced be called happiness?”  

Sariputta replies, “That is why it is called happiness.” (Anguttara Nikaya)  

Ven. Henepola Gunaratana has commented on this line that “happiness consists of what is not experienced.” 

OK, like that helps …

One way to approach this is to consider that the conflict free mode is best described as what is does not have, in other words, of what is not experienced.  

Ask yourself this—the next time you are caught in some way, what is there when you let go? What is there when you truly let go? 

Let’s consider this daring pronouncement by Ajahn Cha:

 “If you let go a little, you will have a little peace; if you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely, you will have complete peace.” 

What does it mean to let go, not partially but totally, as Ajahn Cha suggests? 

Does it mean giving up your stance with someone or something – what you wanted from it, out of it, with it, and even who you were in relationship to it? 

As you go through your week, practice letting go. 

Practice with little things: let go of taking your habitual stand in a futile argument when you see it poking its head, for example. You will easily come up with several hundred invitations to let go in one day, if you pay close attention (mindfulness!).  

Ask yourself this question:  

Does letting go have to be practiced?  

See if you can spot how you get in your own way by thinking that letting go is some long process you master though time. Consider this pure folly.  

Instead of trying to understand everything, or figure things out, simply let go. Let go of your wants, preferences, expectations, and fears. Let go of your concerns, preoccupations, compulsions and remorse.  

Letting go is releasing everything to be just as it is, with nothing extra–nothing special to be, no purification project, no sins to atone for, no wounds to heal, and no past or future.  

Consider this line (I forgot who wrote or spoke it):  

“Sacredness is revealed when there are no alternatives to here and now.”  

This moment –now—is full, alive, and nourishing just as it is.  

Consider this simple practice– when you are emotionally reactive or imposing you views and judgments stop and simply say, “Add nothing to this.”  

Allow the possibility that when nothing is added, peace is already there, or rather—here and now.  

Ask: “where is there conflict when nothing is added?” 

it’s not easy letting go

So many times we are advised to just let go. The whole meditation and spiritual endeavor seems to boil down to these three words–just let go. While undoubtedly well-intentioned, these three words could also be the three cruelest ones we ever encounter.

“For all we feel and all we know, it’s not easy letting go” — from “The Art of Letting Go” by Pat Benatar

The subject of letting go is related to the greater subject of detachment. Within the “valley” approach to spirituality (and by this I mean as opposed to the “mountain” path of asceticism, renunciation, and monasticism) our life just as it is IS the path. At the heart of the notion of detachment we may find a kind of paradox: yes, it is true that through simplifying our lives, having less clutter around, our so-called inner practice becomes easier—but we need to be clear about the danger of too much detachment. While some is good, more may not be. Disengaging ourselves from activism, livelihood advancement and family matters may actually impoverish our inner lives.

As Mahayana Buddhism constantly emphasizes, without the pressures these issues inevitably create it is hard to practice compassion. We need to be alert to the tendency to use so-called spiritual detachment as an excuse not deal with our lives. Another danger is to use detachment as a pretext for indifference or carelessness, which are based on self centeredness. The skill which we constantly hone in our spiritual life is how to dance with the stuff of our life with integrity.

This is just one of the reasons I go back again and again to the Bhagavad-Gita. It is one long instruction on how to act in our everyday life with consummate grace while under maximum torment. It’s a crisis book.

We simply can’t leapfrog into detachment. To just let go is way too simplistic. That’s why the Bhagavad-Gita recommends developing our detachment muscles by working them day by day, starting with the small stuff. Detachment takes practice, and is best learned and developed in stages, as we will see below.

“Piece by piece I take apart
This complicated heart
And I hope to find
Something I can prove is real.” from “The Letting Go” by Melissa Etheridge

Let’s concern ourselves with one aspect of this bigger question: we can agree that letting go is a good thing, but we just can’t seem to do it. Let’s focus even finer into the realm of meditation practice for now. Let’s say an “issue” surfaces and we seem to be going round and around with it. Here is a simple way to work with the stuff of our meditation practice. It is taken from the model used by many Western vipassana teachers and uses the acronym RAIN.

R—recognize. When we’re dealing with a deep issue like grief or working through a strong attachment, we always need to begin by acknowledging our feelings. These feelings are the stickiest aspects of attachment: the excited desire we feel when we want something, the anxiety we feel about losing it, and the sense of hopelessness that can arise when feel we are unable to achieve it.

Recognition simply means opening to and “naming” the feeling. Many times the feeling will be physical, such as a constellation of body sensations. In fact, the notion of a feeling as an emotion has no correlate in Buddhist psychology. Within this system we call a feeling is a combination of body sensations, thoughts in mind and mental pictures. We just open to the present reality, and let our self cry inside, if that’s what happens. Over time we come to notice that suffering is created by our habit of pushing away unwanted feelings.

This work dovetails with step two: A is for Acceptance. Acceptance is an awkward word. What we mean is being present with non-judgmental awareness to what is happening as it is happening. Acceptance is not resignation. It is a saying yes to everything, but not in a cheerleader-like way. It’s an open diving into what is, clear-eyed and with no agenda other than to be with what is.

I is for investigation. This is where the powers of focus and discrimination we develop with meditation come in. Start by probing the feeling space that the desire or grief or hopelessness brings up in your consciousness.

As we do this work we must shift into the witness. As the witness explore the energy in the feelings, the quicksilver-like qualities, it’s arabesques. The key point is equanimity–to let the energy dance it’s dance in awareness with non-judgemental, non-interfering present moment centered mindfulness.

As you go deeper into this energy, its knotty, sticky quality will start to dissolve-for the time being. In any process for working with feelings, it’s important to find a way to explore your feelings that allows you both to be present with them and to stand a little aside from them. We don’t try to figure them out, we simply watch them from this space, as resist the temptation to become fascinated and stay as the observer. We don’t go digging into our personal history, and resist the temptation to make psychological observations and speculations.

N is for non-attachment. This is not “doing” non-attachment! Letting go is an organic process , when we have been with our feelings in this way, after some time letting go just happens. In this stage you discover that gain and loss, pleasure and pain and other forces that push/ pull us through life don’t have to interfere with our feelings of well-being. It’s no small thing. Every time we free ourselves from one little sticky feeling, we unlock another link in what the classic texts call the chain of bondage.

One very powerful way to sanctify daily life is to offer the “purified” sticky feeling up as an offering, as a way to super charge the process of opening, releasing and working through. This is the supreme path of karma yoga: the time-honored method set forth in the Bhagavad-Gita: Offer the fruits of your labor to God, however you conceive of her. More on this aspect in later postings