The Sound of Ringing in the Ears

              This morning, I feel quite alarmed to hear my right ear plugged up, and having a faint ringing sound. I hope that it isn’t the early onset of tinnitus. And I can feel the strain of my ear pressing against my pillow, leading me to wonder whether my sleep posture has anything to do with my fragile eardrum. My body wants to swallow in a desperate effort to unplug the offending ear. But I am not so lucky today, and I end up simply getting used to the congested ear and the faint ringing.

                Whether the ringing of my ear is a terrible obstruction to hearing or not is a bit debatable. In The Surangama Sutra, there is a dialogue between Buddha and Ananda where the Buddha compares delusion to those flowers that emerge in one’s line of vision after a person rubs her eyes tightly. Anything that is created by the body can easily fool the senses, such as an overstimulated nervous system, the ringing of the ears, or the ‘floating flowers’ in the eyes. As I compare that story to my present situation, I realize that it is a bit of a blessing to have the chance to have somewhat impaired ear functioning. Hearing a ringing that has no real source puts me in touch with the constructed nature of all the things I hear. For example, does the sound of ringing really come from another object? Or does it come from the mind? Even if I link the ringing sound to the mind, I have to admit that the sound is not the real nature of mind. Otherwise, if it were inherent to mind, I would be stuck hearing that sound all the time, which (luckily?) doesn’t happen in reality.

The point is that it could be a rare gift to see the strange breakdown of the senses. Through the breakdown, I begin to see that what I feel is real, is actually a particular interpretation that the brain makes in response to a great deal of stimuli. I also begin to observe the patterns of how I habitually respond to situations, by comparing what is happening now to something previous to that experience. Whenever a new situation comes into play, my tendency is to keep comparing that experience to a past situation that might have been more ‘pleasant’ in some respects. I feel catastrophic when the new affairs conflicts with the old. But as the Venerable mentioned in our Dharma Talk tonight, is the mind ever disordered or sick? Though the state of the body and senses might fluctuate, the nature of mind is that it can never become sick or ‘disordered’.  Though the Venerable didn’t explain why this is so, I think it is because sickness is a relative term. Sickness relates to a body that is prone to disintegration, like all the elements. The mind, on the other hand, can never be said to decay or disintegrate. Mind is the background through which all experiences give rise.  It cannot be said to fall apart. So resting in mind is to be confident that I am not the experience of my body.

If I always think I am in my body and conditioned by the body, what results? I have experienced first-hand that too much of an obsession with bodily ailments can lead to a lot of needless suffering.  It contracts consciousness, by insisting that the mind depends on the condition of the body. Underneath that obsession is the desire for the ideal body. What drives the suffering is my tendency to always compare what I feel now with what I supposedly felt in the past. It reminds me of an old story I read many years ago, where the question was asked: in what form of the body will the Christian be, once she or he gets to heaven? The answer given: the body that ascends to heaven is the body in its healthiest ‘prime’ of being (say, 30 years old). Indeed, that would be heaven for most, considering all the fragilities that occur as people get older. But is this really ideal? Who decides that this particular state of the body is the natural or most healthy form there is? Again, it is surprising to learn how much my understanding of pain and embodiment is influenced by cultural constructs as well as past memories. Instead of seeing the body as a natural process of ageing over time, the culture values a particular age of health. This idealization of a limited age of health ends up driving many industries, including cosmetics and facial surgery.

If I know that I am not my body, I can calmly accept the fact that my body isn’t always going to create pleasure for me. And this can help create more relaxed and calm embodiment, in spite of pain that might occur throughout a person’s life span.