November 21, 2009
I feel like I am standing in front of one of those drawings that look like they are just a lot of dots or something abstract, but when you can let go and lose focus you can see an image. In this case the drawing is huge like one of the Philly murals. And the drawing is my life, my mind, my being. The more I look, the more I see random dots, colors, confusion. This struggle just takes me deeper into the confusion like a quicksand in a muddy pond.
I think: “If I could just re-arrange the colors…” “If I could just change the pattern…” Then I could re-create my real self. I think I am in control and try to find the right tool to assist in this endeavor of changing what seems to be this chaos that I call my self.
Perhaps, if I listen to another Pema Chodran tape or a teacher’s edition of Zen Mountain Radio, I could change this chaos into some order. Perhaps, if I meditate for 10,000 hours, the chaos will go away and I will find enlightenment, peace, happiness.
I hold on to this thinking. I order more books and cd’s. Every morning I read Tricycle Magazine’s Daily Dharma email message. Searching, seeking, grasping, hoping to discover the key to ending the chaos that I see on that wall I call my life.
And the purpose of this quest? It is not for acceptance, for simple discovery, no it is to change the wall. As if there is a magic key that will change all the images into a satisfactory picture—a picture of my choice, of my longing, of my desires.
If you have ever experienced one of these drawings that I refer to, you know that all you need to do is to turn off this part of our brain that is trying so hard to find the pattern. You almost have to make the picture blurry by squinting and turning off the focus of you eyes. Then, magically an image appears in all of the chaos. It was there all along. There was no need to change the colors, move the dots. “Oh,” you say, “I didn’t see that before.” There is a deep sense of calm, a moment of joy, of satisfaction, of awe.
This is what daily practice is all about. It is not about changing our realities, our self. It is not about fixing all the faults we find about our selves. It is about seeing life as it is. It is about seeing our selves as we are without the need for changing it. In this morning’s Daily Dharma, Barry Magid writes:
When we sit, we realize how unwilling we are to leave anything about ourselves alone. We turn our lives into one endless self-improvement project… trying to excise, once and for all, [our] anger ,fear… We have to sit with our resistance to feeling whole, to feeling all those painful and messy parts of ourselves.
As I write this I cannot even imagine putting this to practice. I cannot imagine how it feels to totally accept the moment and me in that moment. I have felt the illusion of acceptance of the circumstances I find my self in but to accept my self in those circumstances is quite another thing.
Pema Chodran’s most recent cd collection is called “Perfect just as you are.” Well, maybe, if I had paid my energy bill on time, if I had remembered that meeting yesterday, if I had finished that article last year and submitted it for publication, if I had been a better mother, partner, daughter, sister, if I had more friends, if I could actually practice the way she suggests. If, if, if…. I could make this list a mile long. I can accept “just as you are.” I can understand that this moment is what it is. But perfect? That is another story all together.
Oh, now my desire is to change, to believe in the perfection. Perhaps, if I can meditate long enough, I can see the perfection.
But, alas. I know that is not the task either. The task is to watch, to witness my mind in its struggle. To accept the struggle in the moment. And that is the paradox, just as when I look at that picture with all the dots. As I let go, as I accept the moment, and not strive to make it different, even in that act of acceptance, the image appears. My true being appears. Perhaps this is the perfection. Perhaps this is what life is. My thesaurus tool lists synonyms for “prefect.” They are: just right, complete, faultless, just what the doctor ordered, ideal. The perfect life, the perfect me is not that image I have in my mind, the one that, if I could be would, make me happy, make me successful, make be loveable. Rather, the perfect, just right, wonderful me is who I am in the moment, is the me who is struggling to see the image among all the dots.
At the end of every class and training session I facilitate, I ask the participants, in a go-around, to name an insight or take away from the session. If I had a take away from this reflection, it would be that I may have misinterpreted this word “perfect.” For ever, my entire sixty years of life, I have longed to be someone different from who I am. I have always believed in the “if only…” Even writing this causes anxiety to churn in my inner most being. What is the resistance? Accepting that who, what I am is just right because it just is? And then feeling what happens when I accept that statement? Feeling the powerlessness, the anger, the sadness, the loss, the anxiety of letting go of the desire to change not the future but the moment. This is the resistance. The belief that if I could meditate long enough, hear the right words from Pema Chodron, read the right message in the Daily Dharma, then maybe, just maybe, I can change the moment and NOT feel the messiness of life. According to the Buddha, living in the illusion of the past and the future, is what creates the suffering. Longing for the key to change the past and the future, even thinking that being in the moment is that key, creates the suffering. Being not doing. Pain not suffering. Joy not happiness. The present not the past nor the future. Coming back to the breath not the mind.
Just sitting means just that. That “just” endlessly goes against the grain of our need to fix, transform, and improve ourselves. The paradox of our practice is that the most effective way of transformation is to leave our selves alone. The more we let everything be just what it is, the more we relax into an open, attentive awareness of one moment after another. Just sitting leaves everything just as it is. (Magid, How to Change Your Mind. Tricycle, Summer 2005.)
Letters 