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I’d like to ask you to help us out by spread­ing the word to your friends. Send them to this page, and encour­age them to sign up for our blog postings. Tele-seminar on drop­ping the things that do not work I’m want­ing as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble to be on the call. I’ll be on line and on the phone, talk­ing about how to iden­tify and change your thought patterns—how to shift from auto-pilot to Sim­ple Pres­ence. There will be a free, one hour sem­i­nar on Wednes­day, May 27, start­ing at 5 Pacific, 8 East­ern time. There will be 4 addi­tional one hour sem­i­nars, on the fol­low­ing 4 Wednes­days, same time. You’ll learn the details on the May 27th call, but broadly, I’ll be dis­cussing the acronym NAIL–Noticing, Accept­ing, Inte­grat­ing, and Let­ting Go. Please click here for more infor­ma­tion and to reg­is­ter for the event. Reserve your space now as space is limited!

Loyal reader and friend Jascha Narve­son sent me the fol­low­ing car­toon, which is from xkcd. They have a lib­eral usage pol­icy, so I’m just repro­duc­ing it here. Jascha thought the car­toon might lead to an arti­cle, and sure enough, it did.

One of the ear­li­est teach­ings of the Bud­dha con­cerns the nature of life, and is often called the Four Noble Truths, or per­haps more clearly, the 4 Pre­em­i­nent Realities.

Or, 4 Descrip­tors of the way it is.

This topic, by the way, is addressed more fully in my upcom­ing book, Half Asleep in the Bud­dha Hall, which is due for release in late June. Here’s the text ver­sion of the 4 descrip­tors, as well as an illus­tra­tion, both from the book.

1) Life, and our sense of an indi­vid­ual self, leads us to a feel­ing of dukkha, or unsat­is­fac­tori­ness (dukkha is typ­i­cally trans­lated as ‘suf­fer­ing,’ but the word actu­ally refers to any­thing that causes us unease.) We judge that the way life is, and the way we are, is ‘not quite right.’

2) The root cause (samu­daya) of this sense of unsat­is­fac­tori­ness is tanha—“thirst”—often trans­lated as desire, or craving—which is expressed through the evil twins of cling­ing and aver­sion. Psy­chol­o­gists call cling­ing ‘the max­i­miza­tion of plea­sure,’ and aver­sion ‘the avoid­ance of pain.’

The desire to hold on to stuff, while desir­ing to avoid other stuff, leads to a sen­sa­tion of unsatisfactoriness.

3) The way out of this cycle is through ces­sa­tion (nirodha). If I stop desir­ing, (through the dis­ci­plin­ing and emp­ty­ing of the mind) and live in the Now (because desire is always about want­ing (or avoid­ing) what I had in the past, or want­ing (or avoid­ing) some­thing in the future), my sense of unsat­is­fac­tori­ness (suf­fer­ing) will cease.

4) The cure pro­posed by the Bud­dha, is magga—the Eight­fold Path of ‘sound living.’

The first descrip­tor is typ­i­cally trans­lated “Life is Suf­fer­ing,” but this Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the Pali dukkha misses the breadth of dukkha’s mean­ing. Dukkha might be thought of as per­va­sive uneasi­ness, or per­va­sive unsat­is­fac­tori­ness. This unease can run from mild dis­com­fort to out­right agony.

If you think about it, you’ll rec­og­nize that this sense of,
“there has to be more, some­thing else…” is prevalent

Judge­ment: is the expec­ta­tion that
1) my world­view is cor­rect, and that
2) the world “should” give a damn.

“We ask, entreat, implore, intensely desire—that the world’s objects yield abid­ing plea­sure, sat­is­fac­tion, and secu­rity. But how can they? Their fun­da­men­tal nature is imper­ma­nent…” Wal­lis, Basic Teach­ings of the Bud­dha, pg126-7

Now, notice the word “abid­ing.” Part of cling­ing is try­ing to make things last. This is espe­cially so with things we find pleas­ant, chargy, erotic, desir­able. Many are the peo­ple who cry, “I want this ecsta­tic feel­ing to last!” And then they blame the thing for not lis­ten­ing, for not last­ing. And yet, the thing we for­get is that noth­ing lasts—not peo­ple, not cir­cum­stances, and, emphat­i­cally, not us.

Inves­ti­ga­tion, on the other hand, is expressed in my favourite word regard­ing relat­ing: curios­ity.

In inves­ti­ga­tion, we look at what is, imag­ine what could be, and change our­selves! A cheap illus­tra­tion would be Edi­son invent­ing the light bulb.

He saw gas lights, thought about its flaws, and thought, “Hmm. I won­der what I could do to come up with another way.” He did not stamp his feet and demand that the gas light change. He rec­og­nized an inten­tion in him­self (remem­ber, he had no advance knowl­edge that he would suc­ceed in cre­at­ing an elec­tric light) to cre­ate some­thing entirely new. He then stud­ied, built a work­shop, and started exper­i­ment­ing. He learned a lot about what would not work, and even­tu­ally solved the rid­dle with car­bonized tung­sten filament.

Hope­fully, you can see another bla­tant dif­fer­ence between judge­ment and investigation.

• In judge­ment, the focus, the light, is being directed to the exter­nal sit­u­a­tion, per­son, or object.
• In inves­ti­ga­tion, one turns the light inward, and looks deeply at how one relates to the exter­nal sit­u­a­tion, per­son, or object.
• In judge­ment, the intent is to force the exter­nal to change to match the inter­nal picture.
• In inves­ti­ga­tion, one explores one’s inter-relationship between the inter­nal and the exter­nal, with the expec­ta­tion of bend­ing the self. Releas­ing the self. Find­ing the juici­ness of life in the inter­play between that which I imag­ine and that which “is.”

Back to the cartoon.

While we laugh when we get to the final panel, and see that even after death the game goes on, I’d like to sug­gest that there is tragedy here. What a waste! What is cap­tured here is not just about relat­ing and sex. It’s all about cling­ing to the image that “some­thing bet­ter is always around the corner.”

And then, when the some­thing bet­ter comes along, we seek some­thing better-er. As it were.

Now, I’m not sug­gest­ing that you suck it up and stay in “bad” sit­u­a­tions, rela­tion­ships, etc. I’m say­ing that hang­ing around in bad sit­u­a­tions with the expec­ta­tion that, if you whine long and loudly enough, the sit­u­a­tion will change, is sim­ply absurd. It’s about accept­ing that I can stop mak­ing the same mis­takes about situations.

Most rela­tional mis­takes have every­thing to do with judg­ing as opposed to inves­ti­gat­ing.

In all cases, the way past suf­fer­ing (the 3^rd descrip­tor) is in how we live and “be” (in the Buddha’s words, the eight-fold path—the 4^th descriptor.)

Inves­ti­gat­ing what you are doing, and shift­ing from what does not and can­not work, to what allows you to drop cling­ing, gives you the chance to be present, to be alive, and to be aware.

In the upcom­ing weeks, let’s have a look at some of these “path points.”

It has been said that life is 10% action and 90% reac­tion. How are your reac­tions in your life serv­ing you?

This Could Be Your A-HA Moment

What if…

* you could dis­con­nect your auto-response mech­a­nism and live with full aware­ness, pres­ence and intention?

* you were always act­ing with your high­est and best self in mind?

* your mind was con­stantly filled with lov­ing thoughts?

* you could instantly rem­edy unde­sir­able states of being?

Are you ready to move “Beyond Beliefs” and rethink a new life for yourself?

Are you will­ing to com­mit to notic­ing your think­ing and ques­tion­ing your thoughts?

Are you will­ing to let go of the wor­ries that are out of your con­trol and accept what you can­not change?

If you are inter­ested in mak­ing a last­ing pos­i­tive change in your life, please join Ther­a­pist, “Sim­ple Zen Guy,” and Author, Wayne C. Allen for a FREE tele­sem­i­nar and web­cast hosted by TheSelfHelpSchool.com on Wednes­day May 27, 2009 at 8PM ET, 5PM PT. We will dis­cuss the for­ma­tion of self-responsibility through explo­ration of how we cre­ate our lives.

Please click here for more infor­ma­tion and to reg­is­ter for the event. Reserve your space now as space is limited!

We look for­ward to work­ing with you at the Teleseminar!

PS. For­ward this email to any­one who could use a change in their lives because there will be many A-HA!s dur­ing this call.