日志
when things fall apart......
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If we're willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation.This is the first step on the path....
Pema Chodron
Turning your mind toward the dharma does not bring security or confirmation. Turning your mind toward the dharma does not bring any ground to stand on. If fact,, when your mind turns toward the dharma, you fearlessly acknowledge impermanence and change and begin to get the knack of hopelessness.In Tibetan thereís an interesting word: ye tang che. The ye part means "totally, completely," and the rest of it means "exhausted." Altogether, ye tang che means totally tired out. We might say "totally fed up." It describes an experience of complete hopelessness, of completely giving up hope. This is an important point. This is the beginning of the beginning. Without giving up hopeóthat thereís somewhere better to be, that thereís someone better to beówe will never relax with where are or who we are.
We could say that the word mindfulness is pointing to being one with our experience, not dissociating, being right there when our hand touches the doorknob or the telephone rings or feelings of all kinds arise. The word mindfulness describes being right where you are. Ye tang che, however, is not so easily digested. It expresses the renunciation thatís essential for the spiritual path.
To think that we can finally get it all together is unrealistic. To seek for some lasting security is futile. To undo our very ancient and very stuck habitual patterns of mind requires that we begin to turn around some of our most basic assumptions. Believing in a solid, separate self, continuing to seek pleasure and avoid pain, thinking that someone "out there" is to blame for our painóone has to get totally fed up with these ways of thinking. One has to give up hope that this way of thinking will bring us satisfaction. Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that thereís anywhere to hide.
Hopelessness means that we no longer have the spirit for holding our trip together. We may still want to hold our trip together. We long to have some reliable, comfortable ground under our feet, but weíve tried a thousand ways to hide and a thousand ways to tie up all the loose ends, and ground just keeps moving under us. Trying to get lasting security teaches us a lot, because if we never try to do it, we never notice that it canít be done. Turning our minds toward the dharma speeds up the process of discovery. At every turn we realize once again that itís completely hopelessówe canít get any ground under our feet.
The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. It is an issue that applies to everyone, including both Buddhists and nonBuddhists. Theism is a deep-seated conviction that thereís some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. It means thinking thereís always going to be a babysitter available when we need one. We all are inclined to abdicate our responsibilities and delegate our authority to something outside ourselves. Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves. We sometimes think that dharma is something outside of ourselvesósomething to believe in, something to measure up to. However, dharma isnít a belief; it isnít a dogma. It is total appreciation of impermanence and change. The teachings disintegrate when we try to grasp them. We have to experience them without hope. Many brave and compassionate people have experience them and taught them. The message is fearless; dharma was never meant to be a belief that we blindly follow. Dharma gives us nothing to hold on to at all.
Nontheism is finally realizing that thereís no baby sitter that you can count on. You just get a good one and then he or she is gone. Nontheism is realizing that itís not just babysitters that come and go. The whole of life is like that. This is the truth, and the truth is inconvenient.
For those who want something to hold on to, life is even more inconvenient. From this point of view, theism is an addiction. Weíre all addicted to hopeóhope that the doubt and mystery will go away. This addiction has a painful effect on society: a society based on lots of people addicted to getting ground under their feet is not a very compassionate place.
The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesnít mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we donít have to feel itís happening because we personally made the wrong move. In reality, however, when we feel suffering, we think that something is wrong. As long as weíre addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot.
The word in Tibetan for hope is rewa; the word for fear is dokpa. More commonly, the word re-dok is used, which combines the two. Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as thereís one, thereís always the other. This re-dok is the root of our pain. In the world of hope and fear, we always have to change he channel, change the temperature, change the music, because something is getting uneasy, something is getting restless, something is beginning to hurt, and we keep looking for alternatives.
In a nontheistic state of mind, abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning. You could even put "Abandon hope" on your refrigerator door instead of more conventional aspirations like "Every day is every way Iím getting better and better."
Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We canít simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows whatís going on, but that thereís something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.
Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look. Thatís the compassionate thing to do. Thatís the brave thing to do. We could smell that piece of shit. We could feel it; what is its texture, color, and shape?
We can explore the nature of that piece of shit. We can know the nature of dislike, shame, and embarrassment and not believe thereís something wrong with that. We can drop the fundamental hope that there is a better "me" who one day will emerge. We canít just jump over ourselves as if we were not there. Itís better to take a straight look at all our hopes and fears. Then some kind of confidence in our basic sanity arises.
This is where renunciation enters the pictureórenunciation of the hope that we could be better. The Buddhist monastic rules that advise renouncing liquor, renouncing sex, and so on are not pointing out that those things are inherently bad or immoral, but that we use them as babysitters. We use them as a way to escape; we use them to try to get comfort and to distract ourselves. The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are. Renunciation is teaching to inspire us to investigate whatís happening every time we grab something because we canít stand to face whatís coming.
Once I was sitting next to a man on an airplane who kept interrupting our conversation to take various pills. I asked him, "What is that youíre taking?" He answered that they were tranquilizers. I said, "Oh, are you nervous?" and he said, "No, not now, but I think when I get home Iím going to be."
You can laugh at this story, but what happens with you when you begin to feel uneasy, unsettled, queasy: Notice the panic, notice when you instantly grab for something. That grabbing is based on hope. Not grabbing is called hopelessness.
If hope and fear are two sides on one coin, so are hopelessness and confidence. If weíre willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path. If there is no interest in stepping beyond hope and fear, then thereís no meaning in taking refuge in the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. Taking refuge in Buddha, dharma, and sangha is about giving up hope of getting ground under our feet. We are ready to take refuge when this style of teachingówhether we feel completely up to it or notóis like hearing something hauntingly familiar, like the experience of a child meeting its mother after a long separation.
Hopelessness is the basic ground. Otherwise, weíre going to make the journey with the hope of getting security. If we make the journey to get security, weíre completely missing the point. We can do our meditation practice with the hope of getting security; we can study the teachings with the hope of getting security; we can follow all the guidelines and instructions with the hope of getting security; but it will only lead to disappointment and pain. We could save ourselves a lot of time by taking this message very seriously right now. Begin the journey without hope of getting ground under your feet. Begin with hopelessness.
All anxiety, all dissatisfaction, all the reasons for hoping that our experience could be different are rooted in our fear of death. Fear of death is always in the background. As the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said, life is like getting into a boat thatís just about to sail out to sea and sink. But itís very hardóno matter how much we hear about itóto believe in our own death. Many spiritual practices try to encourage us to take our own death seriously, but itís amazing how difficult it is to allow it to hit home. That one thing in life that we can really count on is incredibly remote for all of us. We donít go so far as to say, "No way, Iím not going to die," because of course we know that we are. But it definitely will be later. Thatís the biggest hope.
Trungpa Rinpoche once gave a public lecture titled "Death in Everyday Life." We are raised in a culture that fears death and hides it from us. Nevertheless, we experience it all the time. We experience it in the form of disappointment, in the form of things not working out. We experience it in the form of things always being n a process of change. When the day ends, when the second ends, when we breathe out, thatís death in everyday life.
Death in everyday life could also be defined as experiencing all the things that we donít want. Our marriage isnít working; our job isnít coming together. Having a relationship with death in everyday life means that we begin to be able to wait, to relax with insecurity, with panic, with embarrassment, with things not working out. As the years go on, we donít call the babysitter quite so fast.
Death and hopelessness provide proper motivationóproper motivation for living an insightful, compassionate life. But most of the time, warding off death is our biggest motivation. We habitually ward off any sense of problem. Weíre always trying to deny that itís a natural occurrence that things change, that the sand is slipping through our fingers. Time is passing. Itís as natural as the seasons changing and day turning into night. But getting old, getting sick, losing what we loveówe donít see those events as natural occurrences. We want to ward off that sense of death, no matter what.
When we have reminders of death, we panic. It isnít just that we cut our finger, blood begins to flow, and we put on a Band-Aid. We add something extraóour style. Some of us just sit there stoically and bleed all over our clothes. Some of us get hysterical; we donít just get a Band-Aid, we call the ambulance and go to the hospital. Some of us put on designer Band-Aids. But whatever our style is, itís not simple. Itís not bare bones.
Canít we just return to the bare bones? Canít we just come back? Thatís the beginning of the beginning. Bare bones, good old self. Bare bones, good old bloody finger. Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the timeóthat is the basic message.
When we talk about hopelessness and death, weíre talking about facing the facts. No escapism. We may still have addictions of all kinds, but we cease to believe in them as a gateway to happiness. So many times weíve indulged the short-term pleasure of addiction. Weíve done it so many times that know that grasping at this hope is a source of misery that makes a short-term pleasure a long-term hell.
Giving up hope is encouragement to stick with yourself, to make friends with yourself, to not run away from yourself, to return to the bare bones, no matter whatís going on. Fear of death is the background of the whole thing. Itís why we feel restless, why we panic, why thereís anxiety. But if we totally experience hopelessness, giving up all hop of alternatives to the present moment, we can have a joyful relationship with our lives, an honest, direct relationship, one that no longer ignores the reality of impermanence and death.
