This morning, I felt an unusual wave of sadness fall over me, though I wasn't sure where it came from exactly. I think it may have been exacerbated by the Friday as well as a lack of sufficient sleep. With this kind of fatigue, it becomes harder to process simple emotional experiences, and it's hard to even become detached from them. At some point, I started to look at the situation with compassion, as I realized that the feeling was unavoidable. I turned to it with the eye of realizing that it was suffering from which I could not fully emerge. And I started to reflect on some of the teachings I learned from Chan and Enlightenment by Master Sheng Yen, especially in his writings on mental health and cause/conditions.
One way to look at pain is to try to seek the original cause. "Original cause" thinking pretty much pervades the thinking of psychology, as people try to look for the root cause of certain emotional states. But there are often times when trying to find that root cause is like trying to slay the proverbial hydra. There are just so many contributing factors in some situation coming to be, and no way to tease out the 'main' cause even if there seemed an obvious one. In that moment, are we going to keep trying to find the one sole cause, when there are many? This is a bit like trying to pick all the burrs off one's leg, one by one. From the perspective of cause and conditions, there are always going to be complicating factors that contribute to a certain situation. To try to focus on one thing is to distort things. In the Surangama Sutra, Buddha reminds Ananda that the source of sound is not in the air, or in the ears or in a particular part of the mind. Rather, it is the combination of all conditions in the mind at the given moment that generates the phenomenon.
But in everyday life, I have often found that it takes the moment of overwhelming pain or sadness to realize that the causes are just thoughts of the mind that we generate to influence future actions. If for instance, I think that lack of sleep is the cause (and only cause) of today's suffering, I might ensure better provisions for sleep in the future. But if I cling to only one answer, what about the other conditions that influence my emotional situation? I can try to bury them or pretend that sleep is the answer to all my difficulties, but this would only require a numbing of the senses or other possibilities. I can do this for a while, but what happens when something else arises that isn't matching with my theory about sleep? To try to limit myself to intellectual answers is just not possible in that moment.
When I am overcome with emotion and have no idea where it's coming from, I have found it helpful recently to turn the lamp of compassion toward it and just see how hard a situation is for me. At that moment, the hardness of trying to protect myself from sadness starts to soften, and I am better able to see that the sadness is not going to destroy me, and nor do I need to necessarily solve the problem itself. This natural sadness can form the foundation for a healthy acceptance of the situation and one's reaction toward it, rather than trying to deny sadness or demonize it.
One way to look at pain is to try to seek the original cause. "Original cause" thinking pretty much pervades the thinking of psychology, as people try to look for the root cause of certain emotional states. But there are often times when trying to find that root cause is like trying to slay the proverbial hydra. There are just so many contributing factors in some situation coming to be, and no way to tease out the 'main' cause even if there seemed an obvious one. In that moment, are we going to keep trying to find the one sole cause, when there are many? This is a bit like trying to pick all the burrs off one's leg, one by one. From the perspective of cause and conditions, there are always going to be complicating factors that contribute to a certain situation. To try to focus on one thing is to distort things. In the Surangama Sutra, Buddha reminds Ananda that the source of sound is not in the air, or in the ears or in a particular part of the mind. Rather, it is the combination of all conditions in the mind at the given moment that generates the phenomenon.
But in everyday life, I have often found that it takes the moment of overwhelming pain or sadness to realize that the causes are just thoughts of the mind that we generate to influence future actions. If for instance, I think that lack of sleep is the cause (and only cause) of today's suffering, I might ensure better provisions for sleep in the future. But if I cling to only one answer, what about the other conditions that influence my emotional situation? I can try to bury them or pretend that sleep is the answer to all my difficulties, but this would only require a numbing of the senses or other possibilities. I can do this for a while, but what happens when something else arises that isn't matching with my theory about sleep? To try to limit myself to intellectual answers is just not possible in that moment.
When I am overcome with emotion and have no idea where it's coming from, I have found it helpful recently to turn the lamp of compassion toward it and just see how hard a situation is for me. At that moment, the hardness of trying to protect myself from sadness starts to soften, and I am better able to see that the sadness is not going to destroy me, and nor do I need to necessarily solve the problem itself. This natural sadness can form the foundation for a healthy acceptance of the situation and one's reaction toward it, rather than trying to deny sadness or demonize it.
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