“‘But what, friends, is the reason, what the cause, why unarisen aversion arises, or arisen aversion tends to growth & abundance?’ ‘The theme of irritation,’ it should be said. ‘For one who attends inappropriately to the theme of irritation, unarisen aversion arises and arisen aversion tends to growth & abundance.…’” ~ Sectarians
Titthiya Sutta (AN 3:69)
“Aversion, my friend, makes you blind, makes you sightless, makes you ignorant. It brings about the cessation of discernment, is conducive to trouble, and does not lead to Unbinding.” ~Channa Sutta (AN 3:72)
“They, superlative people, put out the fire of aversion
with good will.” ~Iti 93
all translations by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Dear Friends,
There’s a phenomenon that plagues all practitioners from time to time—it lessens as we progress along the path, but it’s a sticky thing and can catch us unaware. I am going to call it getting stuck in the mud. I had one of those muddy days last week where even before I opened my eyes my thoughts were brimming with the injustice of how others were making my life hard. The wrongness of this ate at me and as I opened emails, I saw brusqueness and blame and fights to be fought. Everything was irritating: My spouse was impatient and vexatious. The cats were quarreling. My son moped like a dejected prophet and wouldn’t accept vegetables in his lunch. The news was particularly distressing, hate crimes were up and the British labor party had split over overt anti-Semitism and bullying in the party. The world was going to hell and I was ticked off.
The only one who wasn’t irritating me was the dog sleeping on the floor. Even my meditation seemed pointless to help with these big problems of the world. And—I was supposed to be peaceful and happy, which made another thing wrong. But I didn’t want to feel better; I wanted to be miserable. I was right to be miserable because things were miserable. In short, I had jumped into the mud pit of vexation and aversion and was stomping around in it.
It was still morning and already I was tired of myself and this mood, but I was in it, victimized and defended. Aversion sat victoriously upon my chest, like a pugnacious toddler in a dirty diaper, stinking and drooling. I felt irritable and knew that this mind-state would lead to even more suffering as the day wore on.
I decided if I was in this hell-realm, I was going to really do it right and jump in with both feet. I would make a list of all the things that were the source of my irritation starting with the dent in my car, the cat’s mysterious dandruff, the medication my health insurance wouldn’t cover, the neighbor who thinks I am odd, the meeting that didn’t get rescheduled because of snow, the never-ending winter, this wind that’s threatening to bash in the door. The list went on and by the time I got to the oligarchy in America—my aversion had changed. I could see that I was hating the whole kitchen sink of events, and they were stupendously uncontrollable. As the weight of the list got heavier and more unwieldy, I began to see my aversion as just plain aversion. In fact, I was smiling as I contemplated me complaining loudly against the litany of wrong in the world.
Ajahn Sumedho (2014), a senior Thai Forest monk writes about falling into this pit of aversion and becoming very righteous and indignant. He suggests we “bring it up into conscious form, where you can see it, make it absurd, and when you have a perspective on it, and it gets quite amusing. You can see what comedy is about!” (pp. 44-45). My list of irritations was not going away, or trivial, like climate change, they were difficult and challenging conditions created from ignorance, fear, and delusion, but when I saw them all heaped up on the scale—the enormity of my judgment was what was causing the pain and coloring my view of everything.
Instead of suppressing aversion, the permission to let it be, allowed it to flower into a mass of ridiculousness. It does become funny when we can stop pushing back against the aversion and believing it—stop taking our likes and dislikes so seriously that they pull us into reactivity and stop us from being able to see clearly—and they rob us of all the enjoyment and potential to act with wisdom and discernment at this moment.
Being able to look at aversion separates it from the unconscious belief that we are the aversion and gives us the necessary space to observe our choices. Caring for our irritation means we stop fighting against it—we stop the internal conflict that judges the judgment and creates more suffering. This is an act of loving kindness—of metta. Not accepting ourselves in this less than ideal state and always wanting to be loving and cheery is what Ajahn Sumedho calls “impractical idealism” (p. 34) that leads us to the punishing judgment of being a “good Buddhist” (p. 33). We can use our caring attention to contact the aversion and as Sumedho advises, “Have metta for the aversion you feel, for the pettiness of mind, the jealousy, envy, meaning peaceful coexisting, not creating problems out of the difficulties that arise in life, within our minds and bodies” (p. 35). The difficulties don’t stop—but we stop going to war with what is difficult. Sometimes things are painful and feel bad and knowing it, making peace, and laughing at our seriousness and the sticky righteousness of our unpleasant and grumpy thoughts is as good as it gets right now.
Maybe you have never visited the aversion pit, or maybe you can always get out easily—maybe painful feelings and judging don’t catch you up—lucky you! But if you find yourself stuck in the mud, please remember sometimes letting ourselves roll around in it is enough to get us free.
May we all trust our light,
Celia
Reference
Sumedho, A. (2014). The seeds of understanding: The ajahn Sumedho anthology. Hertfordshire, UK: Amaravati Publications.