We often ask, ‘what’s wrong?’ Doing so, we invite painful seeds of sorrow to come up and manifest. We feel suffering, anger, and depression, and produce more such seeds. We would be much happier if we tried to stay in touch with the healthy, joyful seeds inside of us and around us. We should learn to ask, ‘what’s not wrong?’ and be in touch with that.”
Thich Nhat Hahn
A reporter asked a boy who was participating in the [mindfulness training] program to describe mindfulness. “It’s not hitting someone in the mouth”, the eleven year-old said.
His answer is wise, wide and deep. It illustrates one of the most important uses of mindfulness – helping us to deal with difficult emotions. It suggests the possibility of finding the gap between a trigger event and our usual conditioned response to it, and of using that pause to collect ourselves and change our response. And it demonstrates in a very real way that we can learn to make better choices……Working with emotions during our meditation session sharpens our ability to recognise a feeling just as it begins not fifteen consequential actions later. We can then go on to develop a more balanced relationship with it – neither letting it overwhelm us so we lash out rashly, nor ignoring it because we are ashamed or afraid of it.
Sharon Salzberg, True Happiness.
We can go back to sleep in order to resist the forces of change or we can stay awake and be broken open. Both ways are difficult, but one way brings with it the gift of a lifetime. If we can stay awake when our lives are changing, secrets will be revealed to us – secrets about ourselves, about the nature of life, and about the eternal source of happiness and peace that is always available, always renewable, already within us.
Driving home the other night I met a tiny baby fox on the road. Luckily I saw it on time and slowed the car down. It looked at the car briefly but was clearly frightened and quickly vanished into the field of wheat. It was a lovely glimpse of something I do not see too often.
It is a strange paradox that the heart needs to be afraid at times. It keeps us safe. It is certainly appropriate when we are young and getting to know the world and who can be trusted. The reality that some children experience as they are growing up obliges them to put up protective barriers within their hearts. And, to different extents, all of us carry around some of these wounds and some of the protections. However, sometimes the wise behaviours needed when young – the need to be very aware of other people’s emotions, the response to other’s ever shifting moods – can become maladaptive and a hindrance as time goes on. Some people continue to scan for danger or be hyper-vigilent even as they grow older and the original danger has passed. Trusting others becomes the defining question of their lives, and doubting people’s’ motives becomes an ongoing survival mechanism. Sometimes the lack of a secure base in childhood leads them to have so little confidence in themselves that it is hard to accept that they can be loved, and this leads them – paradoxically – to keep people at a distance and do everything possible to make people prove to them that they are reliable. They can never relax. Deep in their hearts they remain the frightened little animal, looking for the slightest thing to show that people were never reliable and thus prove that they were right all along. And in doing this they push people away, repeating the original pattern.
However, when we seek safety as our first strategy we fall into two traps: Firstly, we impoverish our life and limit our potential because we miss opportunities to grow. Secondly, we project our fear onto situations and people, thus giving them power to scare us and restrict what we do. It is true that healing these wounds in the heart is not easy. We do not like to admit this fear, to allow it out and be fully present with ourselves. It is easier to turn away from the situations that frighten us. However, it is precisely by taking a non-judgmental interest in what is going on inside rather than running away from it that we grow. By taking this risk our life becomes richer. It could mean reaching out to someone who we are estranged from or going to some activity that raises anxiety at the thought of it. We can only come to know our true capacity in the context of our struggles, and in how we face the challenges which life presents to us. So today we could look
Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.
Pema Chodron
I think it’s odd for people to say, “I meditate,” or “I don’t meditate.” It’s like saying either you work with your mind or you don’t. The reality is that whether or not we are working with our mind in formal meditation, one way or another we are always working with our mind. Most of the time we’re using it to meditate on “me.” We’re using it to become familiar with our immediate reactions to the world around us. Somebody has something we want, so we “meditate” on jealousy. We don’t get something we want, or we do get something we don’t want, so we “meditate” on anger. Our root meditation is, “What about me? Will I get what I want today?” Our mind is continuously chasing itself around, trying to secure happiness in all the wrong ways. Its speed and reactivity keep us under siege. There’s so little space that by the end of the day we feel physically exhausted. We are drained by our continual meditation on the mental fabrication known as “me.”
Meditation is about taming our mind by engaging our mind, with enthusiasm and inspiration. With practice we become grounded in the experience of basic goodness. This leads us toward a healthy sense of self.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
It seems the more we express, that is, the more we bring out what is in, the more alive we are. The more we give voice to our pain in living, the less build up we have between our soul and our way in the world. However, the more we push down and keep in, the smaller we become. The more we stuff between our heart and our daily experience, the more we have to work through to feel life directly. Our unexpressed life can become a callous we carry around and manicure, but never remove…..Just as flowers need healthy root systems in order to blossom, feelings can only express their beauty when they are rooted cleanly within us, breaking ground in some manner, sprouting outside us.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Paolo Neruda, Keeping Quiet
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