Encompassing Life's Pains

I remember reading a book many years ago, Ian Suttie’s Origins of Love and Hate. The book  talks about how development for children typically involves making them feel independent and toughening them so that they don’t rely on maternal love to survive and get along in the world. What comes out of this is a total reaction against tender feelings, in favor of an aesthetic of machismo, or toughness. As children, many of us are taught to think that it is wrong to feel tenderness, because doing so elicits the same dynamics of ‘co-dependence’ that keep us behind in our development into adults. We have a million derogatory words for this presumably co-dependent tenderness. And somehow, particularly for men, there is a sense that we don’t quite connect maturity with the ability to have softer feelings, whether for ourselves or for other beings. In order to “mature”, we have to repress the original maternal bond and become a little bit desensitized.

                

           From the perspective I have read in Chan Buddhism, I think that the attempt to cut off tenderness is similar to seeking a certain state of being and rejecting others. When Gautama Buddha first practiced asceticism, he also seemed to opt for a tough approach on himself, by fasting and denying himself the basic pleasures or sustenance of life. It was only later that he arrived at a middle path between indulgence and total asceticism. In many ways, all human beings are raised to be a little bit ascetic. When I suffer the hurt or pain of a frustrated wish, my first impulse is to simply cut off the wish and the source of the wish as well. Another example:  a friend of mine was explaining to me how she wanted to delete her Facebook account because she found it so addictive to keep going back to it. I asked her why she found it addictive, but she could not find a reason. Rather than going into an understanding of what draws her to Facebook, my friend prefers to have nothing to do with it. But without understanding the original craving, it is easy for it to come back in a different form, such as an attachment to texting or some other mobile application. I explained to my friend: I may have a craving for ice cream, but would that make me want to cut off my mouth? I think the extreme of asceticism would be trying to dissociate from the emotion altogether, rather than embracing its source.

               

           Meditation practice is often the choice between asceticism and embracing an experience. Asceticism corresponds to trying to deny that pain or other emotions exist, by ‘focusing’ exclusively on the method of practice. This gets me a little bit of the way, but not very far. It is because when I meditate, I start to see the limits of trying to suppress emotions, whereas in daily life, I might not recognize such limits. When not distracted, pain can seem much greater, so meditative practice seems to require a very different turning toward the pain. Krishnamurti has described a kind of meditation where the emotion is seen as inseparable from ‘me’. But how is this accomplished? I am not always successful at this. At times, I think that one has to imagine some being that is large enough to contain all the suffering in the universe. But that ‘contain’ is not just about absorbing the suffering, the way the ocean absorbs poison. I think that there needs to be a genuine attitude of interest, rather than trying to deny the sensation altogether. Christ is an example of a being who seemed to have embodied all human suffering into his own physical body, and this often helps people to manage pain. Why is the image and center of Christ powerful? I think it is powerful because there is no pretending that pain doesn’t exist. Pain becomes manifested in the body image of Christ rather than being completely non-existent or simply unseen. Another reason is that the pain is turned to and embraced rather than cast out prematurely. It is only in facing the pain that one can let go of  it or see its impermanence.

              

           During meditation tonight, I tried to adopt an attitude of genuine concern for the pain. And I found that this genuine concern was not attached to anything in particular. It was a sort of loving interest in how the body was doing and an attitude of solicitude. I found that when I can do this in a genuine way that is not straining or trying to embody an impossible ideal, it is not so distracting. I am not struggling with my emotions, and it is much easier to calm the mind. And I am not trying to use a blanket concept to ‘get rid of’ any experience I have.