This morning, it was cold and icy outside. I recited a merit transfer prayer to calm my mind. I headed toward the subway station to an early meeting, and saw a crowd of people inside the subway station, all going in different directions. Something today felt a bit dreary: in some ways, I think there wasn't too much to look forward to. It was just another day to get through.
I found that absolutely the most effective way to deal with this heavy feeling is to reflect on the conditioned nature of events. This kind of reflection I found to be effective for me today, because it lifted the sense of heaviness that I was feeling about my situation. One Tibetan Buddhist monastic, Dzigar Kongstrul Rinpoche, describes such a reflection as follows:
With regard to the mind in general, there are perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and consciousness. There are many different aspects to the mind. All of these continuously rise and cease. If you look closely, there's nothing in the body, speech, or mind that is a singular thing existing intrinsically, by itself, without causes and conditions. Because everything exists due to causes and conditions, they are changing as they arise, remain, and cease. (p.101)
Now, why is it reassuring to know that things are conditioned rather than being 'intrinsically' existing? I think that this teaching reminds me that nothing ever lasts or stays the same from one moment to the next. Even if a person says "I am at the last gasp of life", that feeling is also going to pass over time. There just isn't any core feeling or state of being that a person can call one's own forever. Things are situated in contexts. And I think that an analytic approach toward these layers of contexts can be helpful in overcoming a burdensome emotion, such as a loss of general meaning or enthusiasm.
To take one example: a person might say that they are in an impossible situation in a relationship or at work, from which they cannot emerge. But upon looking at this 'impossible' situation, it is really the sum of conditions coming together: the weather, the time of year, a particularly peak period in work, physical exhaustion, or maybe a distressing emotion that arises. Looking at these conditions coming together, it's no accident that the result might be an overloaded feeling in that moment: it is the sum of many interlocking conditions. But the more I look into it, the less I see that the conditions are meant to remain in that same configuration for very long. Weather changes, work fluctuates in volume, I recuperate my strength through rest or solitude; a distressing emotion turns to curiosity. In all of that situation, I can see where there is a sense of' 'thickness' in unfavorable moments. But even without doing anything special to lift the veil of thickness, something in that thickness passes.
I think it's helpful to know that there is a conditioned arising to every occurrence, because this awareness lightens the burden of having to shoulder so much. I tend to attribute a mood or a feeling to a discrete sense of self: this is 'how I am', when actually, it is only a feeling arising in mind from prior conditions. Knowing that the mood is conditioned allows me to see the conditions with less vexation and with an attitude of: what can I improve, and what just needs patience? Even if I am unable to answer these questions, seeing the situation as conditioned allows me to feel less overwhelmed and more able to see dynamic movement in the conditions. In the end, it is to see that there isn't a self attached to them.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche (2009), uncommon happiness: The Path of the Compassionate Warrior.. Hong Kong: Rangjung Yeshe Publications
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