After the meditation today, a very
accomplished practitioner and friend had shared with me about her coming retirement,
and the mixed feelings that it evokes for her to go from a state of having work
to doing other things, including spiritual and teaching-related projects. She
compared this experience with the practice of letting go, and preparing even
for one’s own death. I was quite touched by her example, and I wanted to share
my own feelings about this ‘art’ of letting go.
I think
that it is very common to assume that letting go of something is easy. I am
sure that I am hearkening back to movies I have seen, such as Last Chance Charlie, where the protagonist
lets go of his routine life in order to embrace love in his mid-life. These kinds
of movies often glamorize a spontaneous decision to take a risk or change,
without showing too much mental preparation that a person goes through to make
that leap. But I am reminded that when Master Sheng Yen talks about the four
steps in handling a problem (face it, accept it, deal with it, let it go),
letting go is always the last step. But I also think that letting go is a
prerequisite to the other steps as well. Without an attitude of let go, a person would not likely even be able to
face a problem. What one has to let go of is the habitual, protective self that
wants to smooth over difficulties. For sure, letting go does not mean to let go
of problems. This would be refusing to face those problems. It is letting go of
that special attachment one has to the self and its roles.
In my
own life, I think that the most addictive and perhaps difficult thing to let go
of is the comfort and security that comes from a relative feeling of success
and mastery in one’s role. Once I have mastered a certain role at work or in a
subject area, I am then inclined to think that my learning is finished, and I
can coast on what I have learned. In doing so, I get stuck in a role that feels
secure and comfortable. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because secure
roles are necessary to the fabric of work and even family life. But it starts
to become problematic when I think that I am that role, or that I could not
survive without that role. But is there any role that anybody has had since
birth? Unless one is a Prince or born into royalty, perhaps not. Even these
latter roles are continually changing. It’s sometimes important to realize that
no role we have ever adopted stays the
same; it is subject to change and sometimes loss, even when one has the
best intentions to uphold that role to the best of their abilities. Again, is
this abnormal? In these situations, does one fret over what one has lost and
then bemoan what they could have done better? While the latter is sometimes
educative, more often it becomes a form of brow-beating, and it lowers one’s
courage and self-esteem to go forward.
Another
assumption that under-girds attachment to roles is our sense that we are a
well-oiled, high maintenance machine that absolutely requires certain specific
comforts, and forms of respect, in order to function or thrive. I think this,
again, comes from the privilege of having a role that is socially accepted and
relatively stable, particularly in difficult or unstable times. But it
overlooks the fact that we can also become resilient when times call for fewer things
or a simpler life. A philosophy and spiritual
practice that emphasizes simplicity can help to see through the illusion that
we need so many things to cope. What
we actually need is a grounded sense that one is okay without too many things,
and these ‘things’ are only the wandering thoughts of mind.
I think
one last thing to bear in mind is that failures are not devastating to a human
being’s wellness. To ‘fail’ in some area or to overlook something that could
have been done better is educative, but it doesn’t need to be humiliating to
the point of feeling guilt or regret over it. Most of the time, failures cannot
be attributed to any one single thing, and there are many layers of
interpretation behind why one fails, or succeeds for that matter. It can be
frightening to realize that one is not as ‘in control’ as life sometimes lulls
one into believing. One somehow needs to realize that failure does not disable,
it does not paralyze a person, and sometimes it can be transformative, even
though it may seem incapacitating in a short term period.
All of
these principles seem to come from a meditative practice, because meditation
pushes me to question what is ‘me’, and asks that I stop identifying this body
as ‘me’. If I am not meditating, my consciousness is trying to find ways to
defend and comfort my body, which I think is the end of me. Meditation helps me
realize that I am more than my body, and I hope that this experience can help me when I
sustain major losses in life.
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