Season’s Greet­ings!

Just a quickie to wish you all the best of the Sea­son! We’re glad you con­tinue to read this blog, and look for­ward to hear­ing from each of you in 2009.

This is the last arti­cle for 2008. We’ll be pub­lish­ing again the first week in Jan­u­ary, unless some­thing inter­est­ing crosses my desk!

Last week I gave you the fol­low­ing quote from a book
called “Bring Me the Rhinoceros”.

Hap­pi­ness requires a cer­tain sur­ren­der… Your unhap­pi­ness is threaded through your idea of you. Hap­pi­ness would over­turn some things you know about your­self. Hap­pi­ness asks, “Are you will­ing to be a dif­fer­ent you?” Or, “Are you will­ing to be not you?”
John Tar­rant, Bring Me the Rhi­noc­eros, pg. 147

As each year ends, I like to reflect back on my life, my rela­tion­ships, my career, and my writ­ing. One of the things that’s occurred to me is that Into the Cen­tre, our old e-zine, was first pub­lished in 1999. There’s 10 years worth of writ­ing in the archives. I’ve been spend­ing some time mak­ing the old arti­cles over into the for­mat of the web­site, which means a bet­ter chance to read some of the old stuff.

I rec­og­nize that many of the themes that I present on the blog are in a sense rehash­ings of things I’ve writ­ten about before. So that quote from last week, when I first read it, kind of stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t just that it was a clever sen­tence — and it is — but that it frames the whole thing in a way I’ve never thought of before.

I don’t know about you, but in my life, these kinds of insights tend to stack up. So a cou­ple of days later, when the Jan­u­ary 2009 edi­tion of Shamb­hala Sun showed up, I really wasn’t sur­prised to find a pile of quotes that helped to unpack what it might mean “… to be not you.”

About Let­ting Go

The lead pic­ture for this arti­cle really spoke to me. My clients use very spe­cific lan­guage when address­ing what they think to be their issues. Often, they’ll say,

• “I really need to let go of…” or
• “I really need to stop hold­ing onto…”

And then, they’ll give me a list of one or more of things that they think they need to let go of.

They get the drift that there are cer­tain things they’re doing that are caus­ing the mis­ery. It’s as if they think that if only they could drop those spe­cific behav­iors they might just be happy.

Their expe­ri­ence, how­ever, typ­i­cally is that even if they do man­age to stop one or more of those behav­iors, they really aren’t that much more happy or con­tent. Hap­pi­ness, it seems, is always a cou­ple of steps ahead of them.

I men­tioned some issues ago about another quote I’d read, where the writer used the term, “cheer­ful melan­cho­liac.” I said some­thing to the effect that this per­spec­tive fit for me — that my ten­dency is to be a bit sad, and if I don’t watch myself, sad can turn into really sad, and things can rapidly go down­hill from there. I’ve noticed, over the last few years, that I’ve got­ten over myself to a great extent, and don’t sink very far at all into this odd lit­tle pit.

It never occurred to me, how­ever, that view­ing myself as a cheer­ful melan­cho­liac was just another choice.

It felt so real. Thus my sur­prise when I read the line, “… to be not you.”

I think, prior to that, I got it intel­lec­tu­ally that what was going on in my head — my sto­ries, my emo­tions, my delu­sions, and all the other non­sense up there — was no more sub­stan­tial than bub­bles atop a rush­ing stream. They sure felt real — and when I was caught in the mid­dle of all the drama, that was all I could see.

I think I am now really under­stand­ing, how­ever, that this is just me doing what I nor­mally do — in this case, mak­ing myself mis­er­able. While it’s a great improve­ment to sim­ply let all of that be — in other words, to be sad when I’m sad, and not to beat up on myself over it — another, more inter­est­ing alter­na­tive, would be to really let go.

In other words, the way we all go off the rails is by think­ing that cer­tain aspects of our per­son­al­ity, emo­tional or phys­i­cal con­di­tion, or the behav­iors we engage in are some­how etched in stone.

Here’s the truth: The con­tents of my mind, much like the bub­bles on water, are the game my mind is play­ing. They’re not me.

The Jan­u­ary 2009 issue of Shamb­hala Sun is their 30^th anniver­sary issue. They’ve grabbed sec­tions of amaz­ing past arti­cles, and that’s where the fol­low­ing quotes are from.

To begin with, here’s one from the Dalai Lama:

The actual process by which mind cre­ates our unen­light­ened exis­tence and the suf­fer­ing we expe­ri­ence is described by Can­drakirti in his Guide to the Mid­dle Way, where he states, “An undis­ci­plined state of mind gives rise to delu­sions which pro­pel an indi­vid­ual into neg­a­tive action which then cre­ates the neg­a­tive envi­ron­ment in which the per­son lives.” Page 78

Unen­light­ened exis­tence [sam­sara] is get­ting caught on the wheel of life. In other words, we think that what we see is real as opposed to some­thing we make up in our heads. I’ve writ­ten about this a lot–and about exer­cises to shift this.

Although it’s a lot to swal­low, every­thing you see, hear, feel, think, all of this stuff, are sim­ply things going on in your head. The things you see, for exam­ple, are noth­ing more than elec­tri­cal impulses in the back of your brain.

The real point, the essen­tial point, is to fully under­stand that how you view the world is how you view the world.

The Dalai Lama has it in the cor­rect order: we go up into our heads and tell our­selves sto­ries, act upon the unsub­stan­ti­ated sto­ries, and then notice that the world we’ve cre­ated fits the sto­ries we’ve cre­ated. And then we say, “See! It’s just like I thought it was.”

Lame eh?

This is what each of us does, this is what each of us has been trained to do. This is me, being me. This is you being you.

On page 79 we read a quote from Pema Chödrön:

The process of becom­ing unstuck requires tremen­dous brav­ery, because basi­cally we are com­pletely chang­ing our way of per­ceiv­ing real­ity, like chang­ing our DNA. We are undo­ing a pat­tern that is not just our pat­tern. It’s the human pat­tern: we project onto the world a zil­lion pos­si­bil­i­ties of attain­ing res­o­lu­tion. We can have whiter teeth, a weed-free lawn, a strife-free life, a world with­out embar­rass­ment. We can live hap­pily ever after. This pat­tern keeps us dis­sat­is­fied and causes us a lot of suffering.

It’s all in our train­ing. We all know that buy­ing stuff makes us happy, because that’s what the mar­keters tell us. We all know that we can live hap­pily ever after, because that’s what the movie mak­ers tell us. And yet, when we try to live this way, we find our­selves bump­ing our noses against our wants, our needs, and our dra­mas. We believe that hap­pi­ness and con­tent­ment some­how lies out­side of us, and we seek after it like Don Quixote tilted at windmills.

What we believe some­thing is, and what some­thing is,
is never the same thing.

So, now I am going to com­bine what I’ve always writ­ten with the “… to be not you” line.

Not only do you have to notice the games you play between your ears, but you have to actu­ally do some­thing about them. I think I can pretty eas­ily get you to watch what goes on in there — cer­tainly we do that when we teach med­i­ta­tion or mind­ful­ness. Doing some­thing about it, or actu­ally not doing some­thing about it, is the tricky part. Many peo­ple think that mind­ful­ness equals calm­ness. What it actu­ally equals is presence.

Pres­ence means being with what­ever is going on, with total aware­ness, and full permission.

The same arti­cle, new quote.

For exam­ple, if some­body aban­dons us, we don’t want to be with that raw dis­com­fort. Instead, we con­jure up a famil­iar iden­tity of our­selves as a hap­less vic­tim. Or maybe we avoid the raw­ness by act­ing out and right­eously telling the per­son how messed up he or she is. We auto­mat­i­cally want to cover over the pain in one way or another, iden­ti­fy­ing with vic­tory or vic­tim­hood. Page 80

This would be being you. Being not you would mean sim­ply sit­ting with the pain, watch­ing the sto­ries go by, and not attach­ing to any of it. The nonat­tach­ment part is a char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Mid­dle Way.

Another quote:

When we can rest in the mid­dle, we begin to have a non­threat­en­ing rela­tion­ship with lone­li­ness, a relax­ing and cool­ing lone­li­ness that com­pletely turns our usual fear­ful pat­terns upside down.

Cool lone­li­ness allows us to look hon­estly and with­out aggres­sion at our own minds. We can grad­u­ally drop our ideas of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other peo­ple think we want to be or ought to be. We give it up and just look directly with com­pas­sion and humor at who we are. Then lone­li­ness is no threat and heartache, no pun­ish­ment. page 80

The Mid­dle Way—
the world turned upside down

The Mid­dle Way is the bal­anced per­spec­tive. This is how we develop our core. Our self iden­tity expands and loosens. We let go of iden­ti­fy­ing, not only with what does not work, but also with what does. We are not any of it.

If, for exam­ple, I iden­tify with my 30-year-old solid and healthy body, I’m in deep trou­ble in my 60s. If I think what hap­pened to me in the past dic­tates how I am right now, I’m stuck. If I think what I imag­ine ought to hap­pen is any­thing more than the story I’m telling myself, I open myself to dis­ap­point­ment and heartache.

If I watch myself, and watch oth­ers, and in open­hearted, car­ing, and detached way, then what is,is what is, I am who I am, and what’s going on becomes a moment in time, as opposed to a life sentence.

Last quote, From Taizan Maezumi Roshi:

I am not devalu­ing thought. I am just men­tion­ing that we shouldn’t mix up the fact of our life with our thoughts about our life. What we think and what actu­ally is—that’s what Bud­dha talks about as con­stant change. Any­thing and every­thing, con­stantly chang­ing. That’s the real life, which is, in a way, unknow­able. And that unknow­able, imper­sonal no-self—unfixed by any kind of val­ues, attach­ments, detachments—works per­fectly. Know­ing noth­ing, it works com­pletely. That is what this life is. That is what is expressed as no-self. When you don’t see this, suf­fer­ing is wait­ing for you. When you see it, there is Nir­vana, or peace. Page n81

Dar­bella and I wish you and ele­gant, present, and mind­ful end of the year. We’ll see you again in 2009.