Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life (5 page)

As we practice observing and labeling our own thought patterns, we may begin to notice how they are often directly related to the particular strategies of behavior that we use to cope with everyday life. For example, if our basic strategy is to be in control, we may notice that a lot of our thinking takes the form of planning. We are simply continuing our basic strategy even while meditating. This is no coincidence. If we are driven by the fear of things falling apart, we will do whatever we can to avoid facing this fear. We will even spend our meditation time lost in planning trying to avoid the discomfort of not being in control. The practice is to see this dynamic as clearly as possible. So when we see our repeating pattern—whatever it may be—we label our thoughts so that we don’t get lost in them. As we become more familiar with these types of thoughts, we can generically label them “planning” and return awareness to the body. Recognizing that the planning is at least in part a cover for discomfort, we return to the body with the awareness that we may need to feel the discomfort. We will find it easier to actually experience a moment of discomfort when we are not just lost believing in our mental world.

How do your own thinking patterns follow your strategies of behavior? If you spend a lot of time fantasizing while meditating, can you see how it follows the basic strategy of seeking pleasure and diversion to avoid the anxious quiver of being? When this becomes clear, label the thoughts “fantasizing,” then return to the physical discomfort out of which the desire to find escape arose. If you tend to get lost in your own drama, reliving or imagining conversations, can you relate this pattern to the strategy of doing whatever is necessary to avoid the fear of being ignored or discounted? In this case the practice would be to label the thoughts “conversing” or “dramatizing” and then return to the physical reality of the “hole” out of which the need to seek validation arose.

The point is, when our thoughts are not clearly seen and labeled, it’s very difficult to actually
experience
on a bodily
level, because we’re believing the thoughts that are filtering through. Occassionally, especially when caught in a confusing or intense emotional reaction, we may have so many thoughts going through our minds that it’s difficult to see what to label. Then we can even make up a very generalized thought that, when labeled, will clarify the chaotic mental jumble. For example, when I used to awaken in the early morning hours to unending anxious thoughts, the specific thought contents were not the issue. The thoughts were arising from the need to get control, to avoid the fear of chaos. So I would say, “Having a believed thought: things are out of control; I’ve got to get control.” This specific thought never actually went through my mind. I made it up to summarize and simplify the mental jumble. Identifying and labeling the process allowed me to return to the physical reality of the moment. When we are caught in thinking, our ability to experience the truth of the moment eludes us. The more we observe and come to know ourselves with clarity, the more we can see through our thought patterns, thereby entering the experiential world of the present moment.

But even when we clearly see and label our thoughts, staying in the experiential world is difficult, especially in the early stages of practice. Why, even while sitting in meditation, is it so hard to simply reside in the body? What are we resisting? We have to be honest about this. Often we don’t want to stay in the present moment for more than a few seconds.

On the most superficial level, perhaps it’s difficult to reside in the experiential world because it’s unfamiliar. We’re not educated to experience, to be present, to inhabit the sensory world. Most of our formal education involves cultivating the thinking process. As well, our culture is oriented toward fostering security and comfort. So just to counteract our years of conditioning, learning how to be present requires repeated practice.

Furthermore, when we do allow ourselves to reside in the present moment, we often don’t like it one bit. We’re apt to
come into contact with the underlying jangle that I call the anxious quiver of being. We might feel vague sensations of groundlessness or the hole of discomfort at the core of our unhealed pain. We will almost always resist experiencing these places because they don’t feel good at all. We move away from the shakiness, back into the false comfort of our thoughts.

This is especially true during powerful emotional reactions. For example, if strong anxiety arises, the intensity of dread can feel like death. Even when we remember to practice—regarding the anxiety as our path, not as something we have to escape—we may have trouble residing in the feeling of anxiety. Labeling the thoughts will help, because we are no longer fueling the emotion with beliefs such as “I can’t do this” or “This is too much.” But even when we are able to label our thoughts and thereby loosen our attachment to them, we may still resist the physical discomfort of anxiety. We resist because we don’t like the discomfort.

But with practice we may eventually discover that these powerful emotions, which can feel like death, are not death. In fact, they are nothing more than a combination of believed thoughts and strong or unpleasant physical sensations. As we cultivate the willingness to just be with the physical experience of the emotion, this fact can gradually become clear to us. With perseverance and effort, we discover that it is possible, through experiencing, to transform our solid emotional reactions into something much more porous. It’s not that they disappear (although they might) but that we hold them much more lightly.

For example, there was one period when I was particularly discouraged about my practice life. It felt as if my practice was stagnant, yet I knew that I was unwilling to make the necessary efforts. It reached a point at which I began to seriously question myself, and the discouragement and self-doubt spiraled down into a state of anxiety and hopelessness. I wondered why I should even bother with practice, because nothing seemed to be going right.

I went to see Joko to describe what was going on, and she first asked me what my most believed thoughts were. I realized that I didn’t know. In fact, I had forgotten to even attempt to label my thoughts. She also asked me whether I could reside in the physical experience of my emotional state.

For the next few days, whenever the discouragement or anxiety arose, I’d first ask myself what my most believed thoughts were. And as they became clear, I would label them: “Having a believed thought: nothing matters,” “Having a believed thought: I’ll never be good at this,” “Having a believed thought: what’s the use?” Often I would have to label the same thought over and over. But once the story line was obvious, it became easier to approach the physical experience of the emotion itself. There was still resistance to the unpleasant quality of the physical experience, especially the physical sensations of doom and anxiety in my midsection. But as I continued to bring awareness to my bodily experience, the density of the emotion began to change. Instead of something solid, the emotion began to break up into smaller aggregates of labeled thoughts and individual, constantly changing, sensations. Even though there was still a residue of sensations, it was no longer what I would normally identify as “discouragement” or “anxiety.”

In this example, through the practice of experiencing, we could still feel some anxiety but not
be
anxious. We identify not so much with “me” or “my anxiety” but with the wider container of awareness that we are calling the witness. From this increased spaciousness, there is a stillness within which we can experience what’s going on. Our awareness is like the sky, and all the contents of awareness—thoughts, emotions, states of mind—are passing clouds. As we experience our emotions, we come to understand that they are not as dense and substantial as they appear. This thing we call an emotion is just a complex of thoughts and sensations, and like a cloud, it has no substantial reality. But the only way to make this understanding real is through the practice of experiencing itself,
whereby we bring awareness to the physical reality of the moment.

What about those occasions when we can, in fact, really settle down in meditation? What about those moments when we experience the pleasant sensations of feeling still, calm, and clear? Why don’t we stay there? Why do we leave this present moment when it seems positive? Sometimes the movement away from the present moment is very definite and rapid, as if the present moment were dangerous. What is the danger? As we reside in the present moment, less caught up in our thoughts, there is a loosening of “me-ness.” Being without the familiar ground of self-identity can indeed feel dangerous. The more we let loose, the stronger the sense of groundlessness. That we resist at this point, moving back into our thought-based world, is understandable. However, if our aspiration is to become free, we must practice returning to this groundless place.

Why do we have to return? Why, in fact, is it so necessary to be in the present moment? We must return to the present moment because it alone can bring us into contact with what’s real. And only by connecting with what’s real can we experience the satisfaction in life that all of us are looking for. Even if in the present moment we are caught in fear, the key to freedom lies in experiencing the physical reality of the terror. It is here that our me-ness, our years of conditioning, our unhealed wounds, and the overlay we’ve constructed to protect them—all of which are rooted in our very cells—can be addressed. Experiencing transforms us because it permeates the seeming solidity of this cellular memory. From the wider awareness of the witness, this tightly knit sense of self, with all its painful and unwanted emotions, begins to unravel. We can then see it for what it is: a complex of deeply believed thoughts, unpleasant sensations, and ancient memories! We stop identifying with this narrow sense of “self” and start identifying with the wider and more spacious context of awareness itself.

Experiencing brings us to the understanding that we are more than just this body, just this personal drama. Our willingness to return to the physical reality of the present moment allows us to connect with Life—unconditioned energy—as it flows through our conditioned body. I’m not talking about some mystical state of consciousness that requires years of meditation in the seclusion of a monastery. I’m talking about the soft effort of cultivating the willingness to just be in the experience of our life as it is. As we practice, we will naturally encounter resistance. We will make judgments like “This isn’t working” and “I’ll never get it right.” As always, the instruction is to persevere—acknowledging the resistance and the judgments for what they are—and to return to the state of residing in experience itself.

5

The Eighty-Fourth Problem

O
NCE A FARMER WENT TO TELL THE
B
UDDHA
about his problems. He described his difficulties farming—how either droughts or monsoons complicated his work. He told the Buddha about his wife—how even though he loved her, there were certain things about her he wanted to change. Likewise with his children—yes, he loved them, but they weren’t turning out quite the way he wanted. When he was finished, he asked how the Buddha could help him with his troubles.

The Buddha said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

“What do you mean?” railed the farmer. “You’re supposed to be a great teacher!”

The Buddha replied, “Sir, it’s like this. All human beings have eighty-three problems. It’s a fact of life. Sure, a few problems may go away now and then, but soon enough others will arise. So we’ll always have eighty-three problems.”

The farmer responded indignantly, “Then what’s the good of all your teaching?”

The Buddha replied, “My teaching can’t help with the eighty-three problems, but perhaps it can help with the eighty-fourth problem.”

“What’s that?” asked the farmer.

“The eighty-fourth problem is that we don’t want to have any problems.”

Although we may not realize it, we all have the deep-seated belief that if we practice long and hard enough, our problems
will disappear. And beneath that hidden belief lies an even deeper one: that life
should
be free from pain. Although these core beliefs are often what brings us to practice, a life free of difficulties is not what practice is about. Practice is about becoming awake to the truth of who we really are. As we live the practice life, our relationship to our problems may, in fact, become less burdened. But as conditioned beings living in a messy world, we will always have difficulties. We will always have eighty-three problems.

Expecting our problems to go away is truly our fundamental problem. We resist facing our life as it is, because facing life as it is means abandoning how we think our life should be. We rarely take a breath without wanting life to be other than it is. This resistance is basic to human life. For the most part, we don’t want to wake up. We want to hold on to our beliefs and even to our suffering! We don’t want to give up our illusions, even when they make us miserable. One of the challenges of living the practice life is that practice eventually brings up everything we don’t want to face. So we resist. This, too, is a conditioned response; it’s ego’s effort to maintain control; it’s fear of giving up the known (even if the known is making us unhappy).

Resistance comes in many forms: not wanting to sit in meditation, choosing to spin off into our mental world, suppressing or avoiding emotional pain, finding fault with ourselves and our lives. No matter what form it takes, resistance brings no peace. Whatever we resist we actually strengthen, because we solidify it, empowering it to stay in our life.

But the opposite is also true. When we begin to cultivate the willingness to be with life as it is, regardless of whether we like it, our relationship to what we’ve avoided begins to change. Up until now we have probably felt that we had no choice except to push these things away. But as we observe ourselves resisting them, we can see that this pattern simply perpetuates our pain. We begin to see the possibility of softening our hardened
stance by bringing the light touch of awareness into those areas where we’ve never wanted to go. Just having the willingness to look, instead of pushing away, will soften our stance and perhaps even bring a sense of spaciousness within which to experience whatever it is we’ve resisted.