Peaceful at Every Moment

   Reading Robert Augustus Masters Spiritual Bypassing, I am still wrestling with the experience of emotions from a mindfulness perspective. If  emotions are neither ourselves nor are they 'not ourselves', how do we best relate to them? And is there any significance to making this special relationship with emotions into a kind of goal in itself?
    I tried this experience recently: rather than using daydreams or other distracting things to get rid of disturbing emotions, I tried to 'stay with' the emotion, as a lot of the psychologists in mindfulness are currently suggesting. That is, I honored the energy of the emotion itself by giving it space to be what it is, and even allowing specific voices to come up which 'speak for' those emotions. But what I found was that there were times when I would be pulled into the energy rather than being a witness to it.  And when I started to become a bit more curious about where it is coming from, I was able to sometimes come up with possible ideas or scenarios for why things were as they are...but this didn't seem to change the emotion itself. In this way, I think that expecting emotions to change simply by being mindful of them is not always going to create a fruitful result.
   I have found that another way of looking at emotions might be to think of them as wisdom teachings in disguise. Emotions often appear to be messy, intrusive and unpleasant, but there is always a symbolic wisdom that is contained in the emotion itself, even though it might not seem this way at the time. When I say 'symbolic wisdom', I am not talking about the kinds of symbols we might see in books on dream interpretation. Rather, there might be the hidden wisdom of what the emotion demands of us, telling us to perhaps slow down or take notice of certain tendencies or preferences.
     I think the key quality here of experiencing emotions is not to see them as inherently good or bad, but to observe them coming and going, not trying to resist them or seek them in any way. After all, emotions are really just clouds floating in the sky of mind, and a lot of these emotions might just be temporary. To try to place too great a significance on certain emotions runs the risk of creating opposition and reading into emotions too much. In fact, the most important quality that a person can cultivate is equilibrium, as well as the necessary enthusiasm to be able to see possibilities in each new moment. If I only dwell in a particular mood without observing its temporary nature, I might not see the possibility of just abiding in it. Instead, the feeling will come across as overwhelming or even burdensome.
   For this reason, it seems important to be able to see the positive aspects of one's emotional states, even if they seem a bit strange or scary at the moment. Trusting in the more positive aspects of emotions can free a person from being dragged down in moods of hopelessness or confusion.

Emotions and the Dance of Mind

In his book Spiritual Bypassing, Robert Augustus Masters talks about how spiritual life is not about trying to transcend emotions or perceived "limitations" but rather working with and through those limitations. He critiques a lot of New Age spiritual movements, which often try to use the language of 'getting over' or 'transcendence' to sidestep more difficult interpersonal relationships. There is even a beautiful chapter on anger and how different spiritual and therapeutic traditions try to approach anger. While certain schools emphasize venting anger, others treat anger as an inside job which should not be expressed outwardly but worked out 'inwardly'.
    I find that both approaches assume that there is an object of emotion that is outside the mind. But in fact the experience of emotion itself is often in a dialogue with someone else.  Even if I say to myself "let's deal with this emotion, not the person outside me", there is still this perception of a person 'out there' with whom I am trying to distance myself. What if I looked at it differently? In certain schools such as the Jungian school, the person with whom I am angry is really not a 'person' at all but is a kind of mental projection of disowned parts of me I dislike. Fine and everything, but what does it mean, to treat our dislikes as the 'shadow' of disowned parts of us? I think this theory suggests that all of our interactions interconnect, to the point where we can't say there is a subject and object. If the person with whom I feel anger or irritation is just a part of mind, there is no longer a reason to be angry. It would be futile and kind of silly. I can then be like the director of a theatre troupe, playing each of the actors' parts to try them on and see how they sound. And what would be the point of that? It would be to soften the hard sense of self. Sounds good, but of course it's not easy at all.
    People might want to take this to mean that we need to be more loving toward all parts of our being and others as well, but I am not so sure of that. Why is only the 'loving' or positive emotion honored? Could other emotions such as sadness and disconnection also be part of the human equation? To honor only loving or positive emotions is like wanting the weather to be sunny all the time. Is that realistic? So I go back again and try out the different kinds of weather: wind on my face, snow against my skin, rain on my hair, sun in my hands. Don't they all have a place in the world. Why privilege one state over the other? None of them are alien, and none of these states are accidents either.
    Sometimes I might feel disconnected in a social situation, but what does it mean to be 'disconnected'? Am I not right here and now all the time? Is this disconnection perhaps the hidden desire for things to be different from what they are? Is not the desire itself giving the illusion of disconnection when in reality we are always interconnected?  Here again, the model for encountering emotions may not be about internal or external, but about a dance that only happens in mind. In that case, there is no reason to feel that others are ever separate from us.

Masters, Robert Augustus (2010), Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects us from What Really Matters. Berkeley California: North Atlantic Books

Compassion and the Tiger Dream

I read an interesting passage from On Buddha Essence: A Commentary on Rangjung Dorje's Treatise, where the student questions the teacher regarding the link between compassion and the five skandhas. Khenchen Thrangu remarks that far from making people uncompassionate, the idea of five aggregates can make a person realize more poignantly the suffering that others feel in their daily life, resulting from the sense of self-attachment.  He remarks:

For example, if someone is asleep and dreams of a big tiger, he becomes very frightened, but there's no reason for his fear because there isn't really a tiger there. Then a clairvoyant person who can perceive the person's fear comes by and feels compassion for that person and wants to wake him up and say, 'It's all right, there's no tiger. There's no reason to be afraid'. If you're aware of what someone is experiencing in his sleep, you're not just going to sit there and do something to amuse yourself while thinking, 'He's terrified of this tiger that isn't really there.' You will wish to wake him up and to free him from that fear. In the same way, being in a state of delusion gives us a great deal of suffering and pain; so with the realization that the delusion has no real existence, one will have the compassion to free other beings from that delusion." (p.42)

I found this passage surprising in the sense that it changed my overall view of what compassion could mean. When I have thought of compassion, I have typically thought of a kind of passion that treats things as very real, but can a person still feel compassionate in the midst of impermanence? According to the passage above, a person's realization of the dreamlike nature of phenomena actually frees a person to be more loving and kind, rather than more detached. But I also think it's interesting to reflect that even emptiness can be an attachment. I think this is the second part of the line in the Heart Sutra where it reads, "emptiness is form". That is, if a person is too terrified of the dream to engage in it, they can easily end up attaching to the notion of  emptiness as a 'salvation' or an escape from form. In actuality, both are integrally connected and inseparable from each other.

The drama of how one can see the balance between form and emptiness is, I feel, often played out in relationships. Seeing the movie, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2", I noticed the dynamic between the mother and daughter; how the mom is reluctant to let her daughter go away to college, but needs to reconcile her passion with her daughter's growing independence and identity. If love is attaching to forms, the mother could not part from her daughter without distancing from her own emotions. But eventually, the mother is able to take a step back from her daughter, seeing that she herself needed space to make her own decisions and live her life separately from family. This seems like a common, everyday experience, but it's an example of how the mom needs to awaken to impermanence to cultivate a deeper love and respect for her daughter. Daughters might move away, but the heart can remain, and nothing ever comes or goes from the mind.

If a person is caught up in any kind of dream and think that what they see is real and unchanging, their behavior is bound to be constrained by the appearances of the dream. Compassion is giving a person a nudge to awaken from that patterned behavior, by seeing that the dream is only part of a deeper and limitless mind, and thus awakening to latent possibilities. But I also feel that self-compassion can function in the same way. How often do people, in a state  of panic over something, give into that panic and conclude ''nothing can be done"? A compassionate approach would be to keep looking ahead of the experience to see what possibilities are there for rebirth and change. It would be acknowledging the fears of a person caught up in a dream, while reminding the person that the dream is always changing all the time, so there is no need to be stuck in a certain fear for one's existence. This faith in the flow of life is so vital to a moving compassion: something I need to remind myself.

Thrangu, Khenchen (2006), On Buddha Essence: A Commentary on Rangjung Dorje's Treatise. Boston: Shambhala

Dialogue as Community Building

  Many psychologists have emphasized the importance of interpersonal communication-- so much so that it has become a kind of 'buzz' phrase for a successful interaction with others. But I notice that many of the authors I have read emphasize quality of content, rather than looking at the act of interchange itself. I sometimes feel that too much emphasis on 'content' of conversation overlooks the deeper dynamic of fully being present for a person. How often can a person, in the everyday stress of life, really take time to fully in the moment with someone? I fear that too much emphasis on 'rules of engagement' can leave the interaction as more of a strategy rather than valued as an end in itself. For this reason, I almost want to let go of rules altogether and focus on the element of being present in a conversation, even to the point of being present with "disengagement", if that is the case.
   I recently read a wonderful chapter by Buddhist monk Sakyong Mipham, which emphasizes the linkage between 'being with' and community building. Mipham describes the kinds of qualities he cultivated while engaging in dinner conversations with his father, many of which are common qualities in spiritual practice:

"By simply acknowledging my father, I was engendering respect. By hearing him, I was discovering kindness. By enjoying him enjoy his meal, I was discovering love. By not immediately coming to a conclusion about what he was saying and becoming upset that I did not agree, I was developing patience. By trying to see things from his point of view, I was developing understanding. By simply paying attention and being in the moment, I was developing mindfulness. By being curious, I was sharpening my intelligence. By listening to his stories and hearing what he had been through, I was using empathy to connect. By giving him my time, I was cultivating generosity. By appreciating the opportunity just to have this moment, I was feeling gratitude. By letting go of what I was planning to say next and listening to his words, I was experiencing selflessness...."(p.87-88)

Mipham uses an amazing observation of his interaction to suggest that people can cultivate spiritual qualities in their daily interactions with others, as long as they are really putting their full attention, awareness and care into the experience.
     One of the most interesting elements is a kind of letting go of self-grasping and the need to always be  in control or steer a conversation in a certain way. This is a tough one, because a lot of spiritual practitioners might try to assess the spiritual meaning or value of an interaction before they can fully know or see the unique symbolic elements it poses. I found that even spiritual teachings can be used in subtle ways to 'control' how we experience a conversation, by prematurely cutting off the full potential that is contained in the interaction itself. One can use any number of concepts such as 'impermanence' to disengage from a conversation rather than relax into the experience of conversing. For this reason, I see how important it is to meet another person (and oneself) at face value, rather than trying to steer the interaction toward a desired meaning.
    Another subtle aspect of this teaching is observing when I try to grade interactions by a certain standard of being engaged/disengaged. As Mipham describes in this chapter, it's quite possible to not get along with another person very well and yet still believe in the importance of being present for the energy of that interaction. It's not so much about the relation itself but cultivating one's own abilities, as Mipham suggests in his chapter. But as I was reading this chapter, I had to wonder: is it possible to genuinely contact with the sense of inter-being when there is so much pressure to maintain a certain social status or position? It would be a revolution in a sense if people began to realize that status is not necessary to community, and people can be confident in who they are without trying to prove that they belong in a community.

Mipham, Sakyong, (2013), the Shambhala Principle: Discovering Humanity's Hidden Treasure. New York: Harmony
   

Sadness

Feeling Sadness

      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.

Letting go of the second moon

  During the meditation practice tonight, a practitioner had shared a particular poem which was endearing to him. It was a Zen poem which described a nun who struggled so hard to carry a pail of water later to find the bucket shatter, along with the water and the moon she had been carrying with her the whole time. I thought this to be a beautiful metaphor for spiritual practice: how we struggle so hard and so long under the impression of having to 'get' somewhere, to sustain a certain modicum of being or practice, only to find the whole thing to be delusion. It seems that the harder one tries to get somewhere, the more one is just using the mind to discriminate between a starting point and a future destination far away. And all too often this emphasis on trying to make something a vehicle only gets a person into the realm of ego.
  It is significantly only when the 'vehicle' is shattered that the illusions cherished by the nun start to fall out along with the moon and the water. At that point, even the moon itself is seen only as a reflection which comes and goes with the water's reflection. At that point, there is no longer even a need to cherish what is only an appearance or a reflection, and one can be freed of burdens altogether.
   I suppose it's not easy to achieve this in real life, because what we see is often only a reflection of how others might or might not be seeing us at the time. The images are not reliable because they are bound to change with perspective. So what, in the midst of all these experiences, is steadfast and reliable? When one returns to the source of the reflections (the mind that sees, that is already awakened), do these images have such a power over the person? The same goes with words and sounds. What are these but impermanent, passing reflections which are bound to arise and fall from one moment to the next?

Blessings in Disguise?

  The first time I had heard the term "blessing in disguise" was a time when a bunch of people were being laid off, and one of my co-workers had reassured the one being laid off that the misfortune may be a blessing of sorts. The expression seemed glib to me, but actually, it opened up a door to new possibilities, especially when it comes to being taken away from a vital role or source  of stability. What kinds of blessings do we receive from disappointment, and what's the hidden 'gift' in there?
    I think one of the most important 'blessings' in unfortunate turn of events is that it often lifts a burden of having to sustain a certain hope or way of being indefinitely. In lifting a certain emotional burden, it is a bit like lifting a rock to see the life that dwells underneath it. Initially, it seems a bit scary--we have no idea what lives in that darkness that we have been hiding for a long time. But once our eyes get accustomed to what lies underneath, we see that there is hidden life, and often a hidden ecosystem living in the stray corners. Similarly, when I lose something that seems so vital to me, I am really sometimes uncovering other things which have lain dormant, which are sources of vitality. It is as though these alternate forms of life are given an opportunity to come to light once we let go of that one source of life that seems so stable and permanent.
    A related blessing is the realization that failure in one part of life does not devastate a person, and nor does the breakdown of a connection or a relationship. Sometimes there can be mini-lessons and things to learn but also one doesn't necessarily need to do something in one way only. I remember years ago when I had first encountered DDM at the Taiwanese festival, someone there had told me that there are many ways to climb a mountain. And I never forget that notion, which helps to keep my mind flexible and open to new ways of seeing.
     Finally, I think that sudden changes in fortune can force a person to let go more and trust the subtle turns of life. If everything were straight and narrow, there would be no grounds for a person to develop faith and trust, and this way would make it difficult for a person to feel interconnected to the world. As well, it seems important to maintain a sense of flexibility in being able to look at things from a variety of different perspectives.