Buddhist Belief Blog

(This is a topic I was in the process of writing about for this blog, but one of my favorite teachers wrote about it with much greater wisdom than I could manage. So, here is Pema Chodron as she so clearly writes about this “Middle Way” Buddha has taught us is the way.)

I will write one of my own in the near future.

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
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Pema Chodron points to the perfect training ground for the spiritual warrior—anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness.

The secret of Zen is just two words: not always so.
—Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

It takes some training to equate complete letting go with comfort. But in fact, “nothing to hold on to” is the root of happiness. There’s a sense of freedom when we accept that we’re not in control. Pointing ourselves toward what we would most like to avoid makes our barriers and shields permeable.

This may lead to a don’t-know-what-to-do kind of feeling, a sense of being caught in-between. On the one hand, we’re completely fed up with seeking comfort from what we can eat, drink, smoke, or couple with. We’re also fed up with beliefs, ideas, and “isms” of all kinds. But on the other hand, we wish it were true that outer comfort could bring lasting happiness.

This in-between state is where the warrior spends a lot of time growing up. We’d give anything to have the comfort we used to get from eating a pizza or watching a video. However, even though those things can be pleasurable, we’ve seen that eating a pizza or watching a video is a feeble match for our suffering. We notice this especially when things are falling apart. If we’ve just learned that we have cancer, eating a pizza doesn’t do much to cheer us up. If someone we love has just died or walked out, the outer places we go to for comfort feel feeble and ephemeral.

We are told about the pain of chasing after pleasure and the futility of running from pain. We hear also about the joy of awakening, of realizing our interconnectedness, of trusting the openness of our hearts and minds. But we aren’t told all that much about this state of being in-between, no longer able to get our old comfort from the our side but not yet dwelling in a continual sense of equanimity and warmth.

Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It’s the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid. Becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts mote tender. When we are brave enough to stay in the middle, compassion arises spontaneously. By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what’s happening, we begin to access our inner strength.

Yet it seems reasonable to want some kind of relief. If we can make the situation right or wrong, if we can pin it down in any way, then we are on familiar ground. But something has shaken up our habitual patterns and frequently they no longer work. Staying with volatile energy gradually becomes more comfortable than acting it out or repressing it. This open-ended tender place is called bodhichitta. Staying with it is what heals. It allows us to let go of our self-importance. It’s how the warrior learns to love.

This is exactly how we’re training every time we sit in meditation. We see what comes up, acknowledge that with kindness, and let go. Thoughts and emotions rise and fall. Some are more convincing than. others. Habitually we are so uncomfortable with that churned-up feeling that we’d do anything to make it go away. Instead we kindly encourage ourselves to stay with our agitated energy by returning to the breath. This is the basic training in maitri that we need to just keep going forward, to just keep opening our heart.

Dwelling in the in-between state requires learning to contain the paradox of something’s being both right and wrong, of someone’s being strong and loving and also angry, uptight, and stingy. In that painful moment when we don’t live up to our own standards, do we condemn ourselves or truly appreciate the paradox of being human? Can we forgive ourselves and stay in touch with our good and tender heart? When someone pushes our buttons, do we set our to make the person wrong? Or do we repress our reaction with “I’m supposed to be loving. How could I hold this negative thought?” Our practice is to stay with the uneasiness and not solidify into a view. We can meditate, do tonglen, or simply look at the open sky—anything that encourages us to stay on the brink and not solidify into a view.

When we find ourselves in a place of discomfort and fear, when we’re in a dispute, when the doctor says we need tests to see what’s wrong, we’ll find that we want to blame, to take sides, to stand our ground. We feel we must have some resolution. We want to hold our familiar view. For the warrior, “right” is as extreme a view as “wrong.” They both block our innate wisdom. When we stand at the crossroads, not knowing which way to go, we abide in prajnaparamita. The crossroads is an important place in the training of a warrior. It’s where our solid views begin to dissolve.

Holding the paradox is not something any of us will suddenly be able to do. That’s why we’re encouraged to spend our whole lives training with uncertainty, ambiguity, insecurity. To stay in the middle prepares us to meet the unknown without fear; it prepares us to face both our life and our death. The in-between state—where moment by moment the warrior finds himself learning to let go—is the perfect training ground. It really doesn’t matter if we feel depressed about that or inspired. There is absolutely no way to do this just right. That’s why compassion and maitri, along with courage, are vital: they give us the resources to be genuine about where we are, but at the same time to know that we are always in transition, that the only time is now, and that the future is completely unpredictable and open.

As we continue to train, we evolve beyond the little me who continually seeks zones of comfort. We gradually discover that we are big enough to hold something that is neither lie nor truth, neither pure nor impure, neither bad nor good. But first we have to appreciate the richness of the groundless state and hang in there.

It’s important to hear about this in-between state. Otherwise we think the warrior’s journey is one way or the other; either we’re all caught up or we’re free. The fact is that we spend a long time in the middle. This juicy spot is a fruitful place to be. Resting here completely—steadfastly experiencing the clarity of the present moment—is called enlightenment.
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Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist nun, is a founding member and resident teacher at Gampo Abbey, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America established for Westerners. Excerpted from The Places That Scare You © 2001 by Pema Chodron. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

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(My apologies for not getting much writing done for this blog of late. I am hoping to be able to pick up the pace again soon. Here is a timely article written by Roshi Joan Halifax about a Buddhist perspective on the Occupy Wall Street Protests.)

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
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Roshi Joan Halifax

Posted: 10/14/11 09:50 AM ET

It started 28 days ago, with a ragtag group of people who called themselves “Occupy Wall Street” planting themselves at Liberty Square Plaza (aka Zuccotti Park) in New York City, under the shadows of skyscrapers.

They gathered together to call attention to the disproportionate influence that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans have over our political and economic system. Using the phrase “We are the 99 percent,” they drew a circle of inclusion around the myriad forms of structural violence and suffering that so many of us are experiencing these days.

The Buddha would probably agree with their analysis. Numerous Buddhist texts point out that poverty is not any individual’s fate or karma, but rather exists in a web of causes and conditions. The Buddha also noted that the way to build a peaceful society is to ensure equitable distribution of resources.

In a more contemporary rendering of Buddhist teachings, Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh offers this precept: “Do not accumulate wealth whilst millions are hungry. Do not take as the aim of your life, fame, profit, wealth or sensual pleasure. Live simply and share time, energy and material resources with those who are in need.” Bernie Glassman Roshi says: Do not foster a mind of poverty in yourself or others.

In less than a month, this gathering in New York has grown into a worldwide movement that has captured the public imagination and vision. This is a leaderless movement, and one that started without any clear demands, and one that is committed to nonviolence. These are exactly the kinds of movements that those with privilege and power have no idea how to contain.

There is a precedent for this kind of social change. The Civil Rights movement, though now almost exclusively identified with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and to a lesser degree, Rosa Parks, was actually comprised of many leaders in multiple locations who gradually self-organized so that the whole became greater than the sum of its parts. And like Occupy Wall Street, the Civil Rights movement grew in its own power based on a common dedication to justice for all.

Some have criticized or ridiculed Occupy Wall Street because it has not formed a list of clear demands for change. Instead, it has relied on a participatory process, even inviting the public at large to weigh in on what issues are of most importance.

What is really remarkable about this movement is that somehow it has raised the process of “how” change happens to being more important than the “what” of change.

The people on the streets in New York are in the process of being the change they wish to see, to use Gandhi’s phrase. They have organized to provide health care for each other, to feed each other, to clean up their space together, to deal with difficult situations using creative solutions. They have intentionally refused alignment with any political party in order to keep their message open to the widest audience. They are taking pains to use a collective decision-making process so that the voices of the marginalized are being heard and considered.

In the context of Buddhist teachings and practice, these are all compassionate actions.

It calls to mind the words that Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy spoke at the 2003 World Social Forum:

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

The downfall of any revolution is when it unknowingly replicates what has come before it. Can Occupy Wall Street succeed? It can, if it continues to place generosity and compassion before greed, and to recognize the power of interdependence, causality and selflessness.

This piece was co-authored with Maia Duerr, former executive director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and current director of the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program. See Maia’s blog, The Jizo Chronicles, for more Buddhist perspectives on Occupy Wall Street.

Follow Roshi Joan Halifax on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@jhalifax

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