The man was eager
to speak, unusually so for a newcomer to the monastery and its weekly tea-time
‘Questions and Comments.’ After a few initial pleasantries, the other guests
were content to quietly mull things over, but ‘Ted’ (not his real name) jumped in.
There was an experience that had shaken him to the core a decade or so ago, and
he had finally found a time and place to give it voice.
Ted had committed
to volunteer work in a drought-prone area of Africa – medicine, work on the
land, anything he could do. People were
malnourished and infant mortality high. On the too-frequent bad years, the
meagre crop failed altogether. The
villagers had a few goats that survived by nibbling scrubby grass and thorn
bushes. For Ted, working there meant meeting a hopelessness that seemed as
inevitable and implacable as the sun. As volunteers know, finding the emotional
resilience to persist in such a situation is as much part of the work as
anything one can do physically; in fact one of the values of the physical work,
however inadequate the results may seem, is that it provides a relief from the
grinding force of helplessness. Doing something helps to dull that edge.
However, what had stirred
him most deeply was the mental state of the villagers themselves. They were bright-eyed and lived lightly; they
weren’t always happy, but neither were they patiently enduring or grimly
surviving. They were as void of such shields as they were of bitterness or
despair. Somehow, they could dance and sing
and laugh: it didn’t make sense. But what turned his mind completely
upside-down was that when the time came for him to leave, these people who had
as near to nothing as makes little difference, insisted on giving him one of
their goats. It was all they had.
That contradictory
response had challenged Ted’s sense of living a meaningful life in secular
materialist terms. How was it that people who had so little, so much less
security and comfort than he had, were yet happier than him? And a further question kept nagging: In terms
of freedom from stress and inner conflict, how far does the conventional
direction of getting a successful career, a car and a mortgage go?
I paused and listened
to what was happening within me. ‘They didn’t have a “should be”,’ was what I
offered, waiting for anything further to arise in my mind, ‘they didn’t have an
idea of how things should be.’ The
statement seemed simplistic, even callous if developed as an ideological
response to the world’s suffering. However as is often the case when one
listens deeply to what is being expressed, the comment that emerged touched the
moment’s truth.
As we moved into
dialogue, it was easy enough to explore the degree to which the
emotionally-charged notion of ‘the way it should be’ was a major source of
suffering to us well-fed, clothed and comfortably-sheltered people. ‘Should be’s’ – expectations and assumptions
about everything from other people, the weather, the government and the global
economy – formed clouds that hovered over most of us for periods of time and cast
shadows of lost promise, of frustration, and of further struggles to get things
right. Whatever ‘right’ would be.
Because, although the
sense that the society, life and oneself weren’t as good as they should be was
a presence in our hearts, it was difficult to get a realistic picture of a
scenario that would suit everyone. Furthermore, as things had never been the
way they should be … on a statistical basis alone, that made it unlikely that
they ever would. A few moments’ investigation also questioned as to who it is
that knows, or what is it in us that tells us, how things should be. And on
what grounds? How many people as we meet them, and how many situations that
arise, can actually fit into any ideal state? Wouldn’t it feel freer, wouldn’t
our minds feel more open to come to terms with what was actually happening
without that sense of ‘it shouldn’t be
like this.’
However, there’s
an uneasiness about letting go of how things should be. Would that commit us to
a state of indifferent passivity? What about aspiration? And compassion? Do we
just watch the pangs of the world and the wincing and pushing of our minds
until we give up? Is that what ‘letting go’ is about?
There’s a story by
the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges that makes a point about the wrong
kind of letting go. Called The Immortal,
it’s an exploration of a theme, a parable of sorts. The central theme of this
story is one of a quest for immortality, for freedom from death and for the
paradise that would ensue. After a long trek across a desert, the narrator
comes across a paradoxical city. It is elaborately constructed of streets that
lead to dead-ends, of labyrinths, of great doorways that open onto pits, of
irregular cupolas and columns; this crazy city is also uninhabited. In the
desert that surrounds the city are some scrawny sub-humans clothed in rags and
eating little. One of these, a being who is accompanying the narrator as a
guide, only manages to speak – and with difficulty – when a provident rainfall
washes their faces. He, it turns out, is Homer, and has become immortal, as
have all the sub-humans in the surrounding desert. So, the fable unfolds. Being immortal, these
people are under no pressure, and have nothing driving them on to reach
deadlines. Nothing will kill them, so there is nothing to be concerned about.
They see everything pass away, so they are free from the pangs of unrequited
love, and from the gnawing envy of others. Nothing needs be built, nothing is
precious and made poignant by its unrepeatability; hence there is nothing that
needs to be expressed. So they look at each other with indifference; and when one
of their number falls into a quarry he spends seventy years in this pit burning
with thirst before anyone throws him a rope to haul him out. Building the crazy
city was the work of these immortals, a final expression, before they abandoned
even that, of the meaninglessness of an endless future devoid of moral purpose,
compassion and self-sacrifice. So is this immortality the ending of birth and
death, the extinction of desire and the way to the Deathless that the Buddha
advocated? Surely not – these immortals are
the living dead. The plight of the African villagers offers more in terms of living
freedom.
The human
predicament needs to be looked into fully and holistically; it needs to include
not just the world as something ‘out there’, but the ‘inner’ world of our
attitudes, reactions and responses. Actually it needs more than looking into –
this holistic experience, in which there is no real separation, has to be entered
and fully felt. No sane mind can advocate poverty and infant mortality – but can
we open to and sit with the fact that ageing, sickness, death (at any time) and
separation from the loved are universally unavoidable? ‘All that is mine beloved and pleasing will become otherwise, will
become separated from me.’ This, one
of the most troubling statements about the human condition that I’ve come
across, is something that the Buddha recommended we reflect upon and take in on
a daily basis. Because whether it should
be or not, this is definitely the way it is for all of us. It’s an arrow of truth, shooting straight through
the heart.
It’s all so unfair – but the Buddha shot this arrow,
the truth of dukkha, as an opening to
an Awakening that brings about our highest happiness. Yes, in one of his own
moving parables, (Samyutta 56.46) the
Buddha sets up the scenario whereby what is offered to you is the possibility
of being stabbed with spears one hundred times in the morning, one hundred
times in the afternoon and one hundred times in the evening. In this parable,
this ‘stab-a-thon’ will happen every day for one hundred years – at the
end of which you will realize and Awaken through the Four Noble Truths. ‘If
someone makes you that offer’, says the Buddha, ‘accept it.’ Realizing as it really is the truths of
suffering, its arising, its ceasing and the Path to that ceasing will be for our
long-lasting welfare. And this process will
also be accompanied by happiness and joy.
However, the Buddha
didn’t teach these Four Noble Truths to uninitiated beginners; only when the
heart was made ready by reflections and practices of generosity, morality and
renunciation would he deliver the truths that release it. And that’s the clue. Because
these practices introduce us to the holistic sense – ‘to others as to myself’ –
and also check the rush towards sense-gratification that is a primary obstacle
to staying holistic. The African tribe, by being a collective, had that sense; together
they could dance, grieve and share what they had. Because of this shared sense
they were not bowed down with the suffering of ‘Why me?’ This sense of being part of a universality has a capacity that
our self-importance blocks; here is the bull’s eye to which the arrow of
suffering brings transformation when we no longer deny or rail against it. Because
if attention is steadied on that vulnerable point, the response of true
knowing, selflessness, and compassion issues forth. This is the Awakening to
the Way It Is – a Dhamma that does not shift and die. It’s a Dhamma that never tells you how you or they
or it should be, but it unerringly makes it clear what you should do.
In Dhamma-practice
we are encouraged to relinquish guilt, regret and fantasies around trying to be
clearer, stronger or more loving than we are, and to replace all that with
here-and-now acceptance of ourselves and each other. That acceptance is that there’s
nothing that we have to be; in fact that there’s nothing that we ever can be – except the awareness that the images
and impression of self, other and the world are subject to change. Yet that acceptance
requires a subtle action, a shift to the holistic sense.
Of course, to put the
conventional reality aside and to step out of the regretted past, the mundane
present and the anxious future; to come to a place of timeless, selfless
response – that too takes some doing. But
if we don’t do that, our minds either spin around trying to create a happy
world, or close to shut out its pangs. Either of these currents, ‘becoming’ (bhava) and ‘negation’ (vibhava), obscure the holistic sense –
which is the only sense that can transmute suffering into unflustered compassion.
So what we can do, what in fact we should do if we seek our own welfare, is
to come out of those currents. And that means developing the emotional and psychological
capacity to steady our awareness and meet what arises without holding on or
closing awareness. This is uncomfortable and confusing at first, because to
give up controlling or defending the heart against life confronts the ego.
Initiation into wholeness isn’t ego-gratifying. But it’s from this attention as
it deepens beyond the currents of bhava/vibhava
that the Awakening response will emerge. Putting aside the ‘should be’ therefore
doesn’t mean putting aside being touched and responding. It means that our true response has to be one
that doesn’t get bogged down in, regret or deny life. To live truthfully is to
live lightly.
In fact Ted’s
presence in Africa, his wish to help, his work, along with his confusion at the
villagers’ attitudes were also attempts at the Four Noble Truths. He saw
suffering, and in the only way that he knew how, he went forth to end it. But he hadn’t fully entered dukkha and he had no Path. Yet he got a teaching: he thought that
suffering was outside himself and he could fix it, but the villagers had presented
him with a Dhamma that blew that paradigm apart. Unable to fit the experience into his customary
way of thinking, now he needed the skill and the encouragement to meet and
deepen into what had hit him. The monastery’s reception room in comfortable
West Sussex is a long way from impoverished rural Africa; but it’s significant
that something in him sought out such an occasion – because it was a place for talking
to and being heard by others. This is the most available entry to the holistic
Cosmos. But more than that, Cittaviveka
monastery presents a situation that is based on generosity, morality and
renunciation, where deep attention to oneself, to others, and to the Way It Is,
is encouraged and cultivated. These frame a door, but then you’ve got to do
it. The key has to be turned. Because without wisely attending and opening
into what it reveals, the door of suffering isn’t a Noble Truth, it’s just
plain miserable and it doesn’t go away.
Ted comes to the monastery regularly now, to work, listen and meditate. As for me: at times – and if
my mind was fully-Awakened, it would be all the time – I live in awe of how the
peace of the Way It Is emerges out of meeting, purely, what arises. That out of
an unsatisfactory and even anguishing existence should flow such strength,
grandeur and freedom that will make a human being give all they have – just
because it is the right and true thing to do. But the sweet truth is that although
sickness and death may be our lot, greed, hatred and delusion and the needless
suffering they create don’t have to weigh us down.
