Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change (7 page)

Using the breath as the object of meditation supports the mind’s natural capacity to be present. But the first thing most of us notice when we start meditating is how easily our mind wanders, how easily we’re distracted and become lost in planning and remembering. When the mind wanders, the breath serves as a home base we can always return to.

The habit of exiting, of escaping into thoughts and daydreams, is a common occurrence. In fact, fantasy is where we spend most of our time. The Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck called these flights of fancy “the substitute life.”

Of course, we don’t have to be meditating for the mind to wander off to this substitute life. We can be listening to someone talking and mentally just depart. The person is right in front of us, but we’re on the beach at Waikiki. The main way we depart is by keeping up a running internal commentary on what’s going on and what we’re feeling:
I like this, I don’t like that, I’m hot, I’m cold,
and so on. In fact, we can become so caught up in this internal dialogue that the people around us become invisible. An important part of meditation practice, therefore, is to nonaggressively drop that ongoing conversation in our head and joyfully come back to the present, being present in the body, being present in the mind, not envisioning the future or reliving the past but, if only briefly, showing up for this very moment.

To bring our attention back to the breath, we use a technique called labeling. Whenever we notice that we’re distracted, we make a mental note, “thinking,” then gently return our attention to the breath. It’s important to have
a kind attitude as we meditate, to train in making friends with ourselves rather than strengthening rigidity and self-criticism. Therefore, we try to label with a good-hearted, nonjudgmental mind. I like to imagine that thoughts are bubbles and that labeling them is like touching a bubble with a feather. That’s very different from attacking thoughts as if they were clay pigeons we were trying to shoot down.

One student said that he called the voice in his head “the little sergeant.” The sergeant was always harsh and critical, always barking orders: “Shape up! Do it the right way!” Instead, we cultivate unconditional self-acceptance. We cultivate feeling the heart. When we find that we’re labeling thinking in harsh tones, we can stop and use a kinder voice.

There’s a traditional form of meditation that involves very closely observing the kinds of thoughts that are arising and labeling them accordingly—harsh thought, entertainment thought, passion thought, angry thought, and so on. But since there is judgment involved in labeling thoughts in this way, Chögyam Trungpa taught instead to drop all labels that characterize thoughts as virtuous or unvirtuous and simply label thoughts “thinking.” That’s just what it is, thinking—no more, no less.

Shantideva enthusiastically urges us to stay present even with extreme discomfort. “There is nothing that does not grow light, through habit and familiarity,” he says. “Putting up with little cares, I’ll train myself to bear with great adversity.”

But how, exactly, do we train in being present not just for the “little cares”—the minor annoyances of life—but also for “great adversity”? The Tibetan Buddhist master Dzongsar Khyentse called the irritations of daily life “bourgeois suffering.” It is by opening fully to these everyday
inconveniences—our favorite restaurant’s being closed, being stuck in traffic, bad weather, hunger pangs—that we develop the capacity to stay present in the face of greater challenges. The practice of meditation gives us a way of working with thoughts and emotions, with the fears and doubts that arise over and over again in our minds when they are triggered by difficult outer circumstances. Supported by the breath, we learn to stay present with all of our experience, even great adversity, and to label the thoughts, let them go, and come back to the here and now.

Some people think that labeling is cumbersome and unnecessary, but the practice can be very profound. Labeling without judgment helps us to see the very nature of thoughts as ephemeral, always dissolving, always elusive, never predictable. When we say “thinking,” we are pointing to the empty nature of thoughts, to the transparency of thoughts and emotions.

This basic meditation technique is designed to help us remain open and receptive not only to our thoughts and emotions, not only to outer circumstances and the people we encounter, but also to groundlessness itself, to this underlying energy that is so threatening to the part of us that wants certainty. This practice allows us to get very close to this edgy, uncomfortable energy. It allows us to become familiar with nothing to hold on to, with stepping into the next moment without knowing what will happen. It gives us practice in taking a leap. It also gives us the space to notice how the mind immediately tries to entertain us or come up with scenarios of escape or revenge or do whatever else it does to try to provide security and comfort.

As we continue the practice, we will come to experience life’s impermanent and changing energy not just as threatening
but also as refreshing, liberating, and inspiring. It’s the same energy—we just experience it in two different ways. Either we can relax into it, seeing it as the true nature of our mind, our unconditional goodness, or we can react against it. When we react against it—when we feel the energy as scary and uncomfortable and restless, and our body wants to move and our mind wants to latch on to something—we can train in the basic technique of labeling thoughts and letting them go, then bringing our attention back to the breath and staying present with the feeling. If for only ten minutes a day, we can sit and practice being mindful, being awake, being right here. We can practice warmth and acceptance. We can train in letting go of the breath, letting go of the thoughts, and greeting the next moment with an open mind. This is the preparation we need for the three-step practice, not to mention for living a wakeful life.

Sakyong Mipham recommends that as we sit down to meditate, we contemplate our intention for the session. Our intention might be to strengthen the natural stability of mind by training in continually coming back to the body, to our mood right now, and to our environment. Or our intention might be to make friends with ourselves, to be less stern and judgmental as we meditate, so we might train in noticing our tone of voice when we label and lightening up and not being too tight or goal oriented in our practice. Our intention might be to let go and not hold the breath tightly as if it were a life raft, not cling to our thoughts, not believe our story lines. We might intend to acknowledge thoughts as they arise and train in letting them go. Our intention might be to train in all of these—or in something different altogether, something that is particularly important to us.

Each day, we can set aside time for meditation. It can be as short as five or ten minutes or as long as we want to keep going.

First, contemplate your intention for this practice session. Then run through the six points of good posture to settle your body. If you like, you can then count breaths from 1 to 10, or from 1 to 20, to settle the mind. Then drop the counting and simply bring light awareness to the breath. As you continue to meditate, maintain gentle awareness of the breath as it comes in and goes out, or just as it goes out. When the mind wanders, gently label the thoughts “thinking” and joyfully, without judgment, bring your attention back to the breath.

Over time, as the thinking mind begins to settle, we’ll start to see our patterns and habits far more clearly. This can be a painful experience. I can’t overestimate the importance of accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were or think we ought to be. By cultivating nonjudgmental openness to ourselves and to whatever arises, to our surprise and delight we will find ourselves genuinely welcoming the never-pin-downable quality of life, experiencing it as a friend, a teacher, and a support, and no longer as an enemy.

5

Staying in the Middle

A
MEAN WORD
or a snide remark, a disdainful or disapproving facial expression, aggressive body language—these are all ways that we can cause harm. The first commitment allows us to slow down enough to become very intimate with how we feel when we’re pushed to the limit, very intimate with the urge to strike out or withdraw, become a bully or go numb. We become very mindful of the feeling of craving, the feeling of aversion, the feeling of wanting to speak or act out.

Not acting on our habitual patterns is only the first step toward not harming others or ourselves. The transformative process begins at a deeper level when we contact the rawness we’re left with whenever we refrain. As a way of working with our aggressive tendencies, Dzigar Kongtrül teaches the nonviolent practice of simmering. He says that rather than “boil in our aggression like a piece of meat cooking in a soup,” we simmer in it. We allow ourselves to wait, to sit patiently with the urge to act or speak in our usual ways and feel the full force of that urge without turning away or giving in. Neither repressing nor rejecting, we stay in the middle between the two extremes, in the middle between yes and no, right and wrong, true and false. This is the journey of developing a kindhearted and courageous tolerance for our pain. Simmering is a way of gaining inner strength.
It helps us develop trust in ourselves—trust that we can experience the edginess, the groundlessness, the fundamental uncertainty of life and work with our mind, without acting in ways that are harmful to ourselves or others.

Before making the first commitment, we need to ask ourselves if we’re ready to do something different. Are we sick to death of our same old repetitive patterns? Do we want to allow the space for new possibilities to emerge? The habit of escape is very strong, but are we ready to acknowledge when we’re hooked? Are we willing to know our triggers and not respond habitually? Are we ready to open to uncertainty—or at least to give it a wholehearted try? If we can answer yes to any of these, then we’re ready to take this vow.

With the commitment to not cause harm, we move away from reacting in ways that cause us to suffer, but we haven’t yet arrived at a place that feels entirely relaxed and free. We first have to go through a growing-up process, a getting-used-to process. That process, that transition, is one of becoming comfortable with exactly what we’re feeling as we feel it. The key practice to support us in this is mindfulness—being fully present right here, right now. Meditation is one form of mindfulness, but mindfulness is called by many names:
attentiveness, nowness,
and
presence
are just a few. Essentially, mindfulness means wakefulness—fully present wakefulness. Chögyam Trungpa called it paying attention to all the details of your life.

The specific details of our lives will, of course, differ, but for all of us, wakefulness concerns everything from how we make dinner to how we speak to one another to how we take care of our clothes, our floors, our forks and spoons. Just as with the other aspects of this commitment, we’re either
present when putting on our sweater or tying our shoes or brushing our teeth, or we’re not. We’re either awake or asleep, conscious or distracted. The contrast is pretty obvious. Chögyam Trungpa emphasized mindfulness and paying attention to the details of our lives as ways to develop appreciation for ourselves and our world, ways to free ourselves from suffering.

You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts. Embracing the totality of your experience is one definition of having loving-kindness for yourself. Loving-kindness for yourself does not mean making sure you’re feeling good all the time—trying to set up your life so that you’re comfortable every moment. Rather, it means setting up your life so that you have time for meditation and self-reflection, for kindhearted, compassionate self-honesty. In this way you become more attuned to seeing when you’re biting the hook, when you’re getting caught in the undertow of emotions, when you’re grasping and when you’re letting go. This is the way you become a true friend to yourself just as you are, with both your laziness and your bravery. There is no step more important than this.