"True" and "Illusory"

        During the group meditation today, a feeling of exhaustion lingered inside, and it was hard for me to shake it off. It could be that I had a long week at work. I reminded myself to gently adjust my facilitation to make sure my exhaustion didn't rub off on other participants.. But during the sitting, I had to accept the fact that this tiredness is just an aspect of my experience.
  Now, how does a person 'accept' an aspect of experience without being overwhelmed in it? Reading from Master Sheng Yen's book Chan and Enlightenment, I get some kind of clue when he is describing how the concept of 'many' phenomena arise in an experience. He remarks:
 
 Illusory dharmas refer to 'many' and 'dual' dharmas that result from changing conditions in space    and time. Through causation, these dharmas form the myriad kinds of phenomena. Because we do
 not fully recognize  that phenomena arise from causes and conditions and are forever changing, we think that phenomena are enduring. Therefore, by pursuing, possessing and rejecting,we give
rise to the 'many'. (p.236)
       
When I read this, I have a kind of mental map to help me understand what happens when I get 'caught up' in an experience. I think what happens is that I take the experience itself to be enduring rather than seeing it as always changing. I have many choices as to how to behave in that situation. I can follow the conditions of the past and simply react to it the way I have before, or I can see that the situation is only temporary, and is always changing with new conditions.

On the other hand, if I assume that the state of mind I am in is fixed and has no prior conditioning, I will just add the thought of exhaustion to the exhaustion, until it becomes something bigger than it really is. That is when the second stage comes, of 'pursuing, possessing and rejecting" things based on how we evaluate them and their qualities. That is when the notion of the 'many' arises, according to the passage above. If I think that my heaviness is something enduring, I will do everything in my power to push it away. This includes looking for an easier way to handle the emotions or even going into a daydreaming state as a way of escape.

I even wonder if 'compensating' for an emotion is also another form of 'seeking' and 'rejecting'. However, I think it depends on the situation. If I am aware of the emotion and try to address it from a place of wisdom and discernment, I will not use another 'feeling' to try to cover up the exhaustion. Rather, I might adjust my style of teaching in the hopes that tired feelings will not affect my ability to impart instructions. This is quite different from trying to 'use' one thought to supplant another.

So long as I can see that the experiences are temporary and fleeting, I don't get sucked into the idea that there are these many discrete forms with enduring properties. And my mind can be pliable and soft in the face of these conditions if I am in that meditative state.

Master Sheng Yen (2014), Chan and Enlightenment. New York: Dharma Drum Publishing