Category: The End of craving

Don’t Hit the Fast-forward Button

November 2, 2020

4 Noble Truths, Equanimity, Everyday practices, fearlessness, impermanence, not abandoning, Self-care, self-compassion, The Eight Worldly Winds, The End of craving, Thich Nhat Hanh

Buddha with cranes, photo by Celia

“And the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus, saying: “Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!”[58]
This was the last word of the Tathagata.”
~”Maha-parinibbana Sutta: Last Days of the Buddha” (DN 16), translated from the Pali by Sister Vajira & Francis Story

For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
~Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
(English Standard Version Bible)

Dear friends,

Last week, I honestly looked at my desires and saw how much I wanted to fast forward life, to be past this election, past the pandemic. I wanted it over and was not looking forward to living through the process of having these things unfold moment by moment. I had real resistance to this pain of uncertainty and the not knowing. When I was able to stay present with the discomfort with compassion, something shifted. I don’t know exactly the catalyst. I do know that there was a moment of joy when I recognized that I have been taught how to hold my suffering. I know what to do and I am doing it.

There is a joy that comes when we do not abandon ourselves, when we have the confidence to stay present and to say, “I got you. I am here for you, no matter what.” I come back to this self-compassion over and over. It is the most transformative and powerful medicine I have received from my practice. Showing up and knowing that no matter how good or how bad, I have the resources to stay.

The Buddha’s teaching on the Eight Worldly Winds, also called the vicissitudes, has helped me put my experience into perspective. 2,600 years ago, the Buddha said, “Monks, these eight worldly conditions spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight worldly conditions. Which eight? Gain, loss, status, disgrace, censure, praise, pleasure, & pain. These are the eight worldly conditions that spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight worldly conditions. (Lokavipatti Sutta: The Failings of the World, T. Bhikkhu, trans.)”

In this ancient teaching, we can see the universality of loss and pain. We encounter this in the first Noble Truth, that suffering, or stress exists. We also know that there are causes and reasons for suffering. This is the second Noble Truth. When we see the causes for suffering and discomfort in our lives, this gives us understanding and clarity. Recognizing these conditions leads us to the Third Noble Truth, that there is the opposite of suffering. The law of impermanence teaches that nothing can exist forever, this too will change. It cannot stay the same.

I can feel lots of compassion for us as a country and a world, longing for this pandemic to end, longing for racial justice, for change, for hope. And I remember a teaching by Buddhist nun Pema Chodron who was caught in distress. Her teacher asked her to notice the years of habits it took to for her to get into that state and to know it would take a while to get out. As a country, we have been planting the painful and violent seeds of racial inequality for more than 400 years. It takes time to uproot those dangerous vines long interwoven in the culture of America. This requires staying with the frustration, the discomfort, and the exhaustion. If we know how to show up when we are in pain, we will have more ability to be the hand that risks discomfort by pulling out the creeping thorns by the roots.

When we leave our experience, we lose the opportunity to develop trust in ourselves. As we learn to stay with the difficult and painful with compassion, we also learn how to titrate—not to exceed our capacity—to have a touch and go relationship with suffering that can help us to stay in self-trust. This is already the Fourth Noble Truth, stepping onto the path of practice ascribed by the Buddha. This path is powerful medicine to strengthen us against the forces that can overwhelm and destabilize our minds and hearts.

In 2013, Thich Nhat Hanh gave a series of retreats titled, The Art of Suffering. I remember him saying that he would never want his children to go to heaven if there were no suffering there. They needed suffering—a little bit, not too much—to grow and to stretch. They also needed to experience suffering to know what the end of suffering feels like. There could be no heaven if there was no opposite of heaven. This is the law of non-duality. Nothing can exist by itself alone. It needs a counterbalance or opposite to allow it to be known.

In the retreat, Thay spoke about staying present with our suffering, owning it, being available for it. When I want to fast forward through my life and wish it all away, I deny that I have competency and the presence to take care of myself. I forget my own resilience and strength and dodge whatever I see coming out of fear and reactivity instead of taking a breath, feeling my feet on the ground and connecting with my deepest intention, the realization of cessation, freedom, or nibbana. When I know suffering, and also know my own ability to accompany myself, I know the end of suffering.

Liberation is the act of non-abandoning is a way I show myself kindness and trust. I trust that I can be there for me. I trust that my presence liberates myself from the prison of helplessness, from rushing through. I can call upon my supports, my ancestors and those I admire who have lived through wars, through oppression, through situations that I have not experienced in my life time and they still found their freedom. Freedom is a way to reclaim our power.

The more our culture is infiltrated by algorithms that direct us towards what to feel, what to believe, who to trust, the more we are manipulated by what is outside of us. Returning to ourselves, to reclaim our freedom and our innate goodness is a radical act of self-accompaniment. We are truly free when we know that we have our own support no matter what comes, and we are ready, excited even to meet that challenges of accompanying ourselves.

When we have touched the benefits of practice, of meditation, stillness, and centering, we are able to return to the place in us. We learn over time that this is not dependent upon conditions. It is determined by our commitment to our own liberation, our own enlightenment. Enlightenment is the promise that we are born with the ability to live in the classroom of our lives and to learn what is necessary for us. Enlightenment is the stilling and the end of our desire to make this moment any different. We do this practice, not by giving up, but by straightening up.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

2 comments on Don’t Hit the Fast-forward Button
Who Makes You Happy?

September 16, 2019

Happiness, Releasing Worldly Happiness, Taking refuge in ourselves, The End of craving, Uncategorized

View from the Pinnacle Lookout, Photo by Celia

“Cleared of the underbrush

but obsessed with the forest,

set free from the forest,

right back to the forest he runs.

Come, see the person set free

who runs right back to the same old chains!”

~Tanhavagga: Craving (Dhp XXIV, V. 344), Thanissaro Bhikkhu, trans.

“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

“We are always in transition. If you can just relax with that, you’ll have no problem.”

~ Chogyam Trungpa

Dear friends,

The Buddha taught that the root of suffering was craving, tanha. He also taught that the human experience embodies a restless sense of wanting, craving for sense pleasures—the good life of luxury, longing to become something or to escape from being something unwanted. These three types of wanting, keep us spinning, moving towards and away from. We imagine if we got the right combination—keep to a gluten-free and raw diet, work out, meditate, wear organic fibers, stop watching Judge Judy, find a LEED-certified condo in a pedestrian friendly area, get the hypo-allergenic dog, put in the extra time to really learn the new software and get noticed at work, we would discover the life partner who was actually our long-lost friend from fifth grade—waiting for us this whole time, and then—we could be happy.

The Buddha knew about worldly happiness. He was raised as a privileged and sheltered child, groomed to take over his father’s leadership position. He had wealth, status, all types of things, a beautiful and loving wife and new baby… and yet—he wasn’t happy. So, he left in search of a more durable happiness than the one we find when the worldly conditions align, and we have a moment of ease. The Buddha went on a long and arduous search, nearly died and found a different type of happiness which did not rely on the external conditions of happiness being met.

Happiness is our birthright and being Buddhist does not mean we aren’t allowed to be happy, but our regular worldly happiness falls short and doesn’t deliver what we are really longing for. There is a more refined and wiser sort of happiness that comes from understanding that all the chasing and arranging we do—the looking for happiness in relationships, appreciation, wanting to be treated a certain way—will not make us happy.

We have volition or cetana, this is the intention that leads us to action. Cetana can be wholesome or unwholesome. If we act against injustice and the greed that is killing our support system, the Earth, we are creating wholesome and beneficial karma through this intention. But if we rage, treat others harshly and are violent, even this wholesome intention gets muddied and leads us to a bad destination. And if we start obsession about an intention, even a beneficial one, we can be caught in craving and pulled into suffering.

Sometimes we can’t see the demarcation line between acting on an intention and craving. How do we know if we are clinging and craving or merely wanting to do a good job and feel this project is important? A simple litmus test is to ask, Do I think this will make me happy? When I move to a new city, begin a new relationship, or join a protest, if I believe that this thing, this person, this job, the book being published, having children, or being in a relationship will lead me to an abiding sense of happiness, I am letting myself in for suffering.

The Buddha teaches us that when we get fixated on things, we create the same conditions for suffering we try to escape, but when we are free from repetitive and obsessive thinking we can act and be free. We don’t get caught in labeling ourselves and creating new and different boxes of identity for ourselves:

But when one doesn’t intend, arrange, or obsess [about anything], there is no support for the stationing of consciousness. There being no support, there is no landing of consciousness. When that consciousness doesn’t land & grow, there is no production of renewed becoming in the future. When there is no production of renewed becoming in the future, there is no future birth, aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, or despair. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of suffering & stress. (Thanissaro, trans., SN 12.38, Cetana Sutta)

This does not mean we should not do things in the world. Knowing that we have a limited time on this planet, we can ask, Is this project or activity, a good use of my time? Grounding ourselves in the wisdom of understanding impermanence, suffering and the end of suffering, we can ask, Is this enough for me, right now? When we ask if something is enough, we stop considering if we fit the mold of the perfect employee—if we are good enough for this individual, or this relationship and instead ask, if this person, conversation, organization, meets the criteria of our intention to live an awakened life. Sometimes the answer is no. This job, this corporate structure, this friendship, does not align with my values and does not support my true happiness.

True happiness is based on recognizing the constant shifting of our roles and conditions of the world. It is based on living with integrity and showing up with an open-hearted intention for kindness and compassion for ourselves and others. Our happiness is made from our efforts to be the peace, compassion, and love, we are seeking from the outside world. Sometimes, my entire practice consists of going through a day, attempting to keep my heart open to everyone I come in contact with—not closing off in defense and judgment—and sometimes I can just make it through a whole day. When I do this, I dwell in the bliss of blamelessness and living in accord with the Dharma. The Buddha is recorded in the Dhammapada as saying, “Your own self is your own mainstay. Your own self is your own guide. Therefore, you should watch over yourself —as a trader, a fine steed” (Dhp XXV, V 380). We are our finest treasures.

And this is where we can touch real happiness, in our own willingness to return to our true home—ourselves. Our own ability to still the mind, our own calm abiding in the face of change, this is the safe home we have been longing for. This is what the Buddha discovered through years of self-mortification and physical hardship. He created a refuge in his own heart and mind. He stopped running. He stopped doing and found himself with himself. When we stop, we can recognize ourselves as the soulmate who has been with us our whole lives—we are right here, waiting for ourselves to show up.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Category: The End of craving

Don’t Hit the Fast-forward Button

Who Makes You Happy?