January's first week has come and gone, and the weather fluctuates between warm and cold. Holiday songs still seem to linger in mind. It is as though I didn't get enough of it, or perhaps am still attached to the meaning of it in some way: the sense of settling, appreciating, looking back. In contrast, I tend to associate the beginning of each new year with ''buckling down" and putting the nose to the grindstone to accomplish the year's tasks. It seems that my life fluctuates between the work that needs doing and the sense of looking back in retrospect to make sense of the work itself and its importance. Without the balance of both, even work loses its meaning.
While on the subway ride to work, I was continuing my reading of Uncommon Wisdom by Dzigar Konstrul Rinpoche. I came across the following:
Weariness recognizes the cause and conditions and sees the way out. Even though you enjoy relationships, ultimately everything is impermanent. How can you sincerely be attached to something that you know is impermanent and going to change (p.141)
Dzigar Konstrul Rinpoche contrasts 'weariness' with 'depression'. Weariness seems to involve having a clear sense that attachment can lead to all sorts of self-inflicted suffering, coupled with a determination to emerge from attachment. Depression, on the other hand, carries a kind of hopelessness. Once a person has decided that they don't need to suffer from attaching to something, they have more inner power and can free up space for other things in life.
While reading this chapter, I have tried to reflect on when and how I developed a determination to 'let go of' attachment, or even a sense of weariness. I think it's only through meditation that I have believed it even possible to do so. I have also recently been more aware of the pain that comes from craving and desire.
When I was younger, I associated desire with something that 'feels good', such as wanting a piece of cake or sweet food. But in the process of craving something, do people not sometimes notice the pangs or the mounting frustration that comes from 'not having'? For me, frustration is like a tight knot that wraps around my heart and stays there for quite some time. It often brings with it feelings of impatience or even aversion, as I try to avoid obstacles to getting what I desire.
Once I can oversee the entire cycle of desire as a totality, I have become even less fond of the state of 'having' desire in the first place. It is like being on a roller coaster for so many times that one is even afraid to get on the cycle, much less have to endure the after-effects of it. Certainly, it is easy to get hooked on the highs, and this too can become addictive. But when have the 'highs' ever stayed with a person? And is there ever a point where one has truly become satiated from it. Even the desire for approval or close friendship can become a craving that makes one's life feel unfulfilled by comparison.
Interestingly, Dzigar Konstrul Rinpoche does not construe weariness as a 'negation' or a kind of absence of feeling. Instead, he describes it as a determination to end suffering by realizing its impermanence, or the actual nature of desire itself. Sometimes this can be a conscious choice not to participate in the desire itself: to say no to it, or to gently experiment in refraining from it. There are certain kinds of attachments, such as to 'being right' or 'getting one's way', which can only abate when I see that there is no permanent self which is 'to be right'. At that point, I can observe my reactions without giving into the belief that I am those reactions.
I believe that it's best not to force this practice. Having desires is okay, but it's important to simply ask who really has those desires. If I see that there is no single fixed 'me' that is having the desire, it starts to lose its sting when it is left unfulfilled. It is as though I were watching a movie about some character who suffers the pangs of a desire. Though I might temporarily participate in that person's plight, it would be wrong for me to think I am that person on the screen. Yet, we do this all so often, particularly when the practice of meditation is not foremost in mind.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche (2009), Uncommon Happiness: The Path of the Compassionate Warrior.. Hong Kong: Rangjung Yeshe Publications
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