How to stop causing our own suffering

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We are continuing a series of talks based on Matthieu Ricard’s book, Happiness:  A Guide to developing Life’s most important skill.    Today, we’ll take a look at some practical ways to untangle the power that we give to unskillful thoughts, unskillful emotions and unskillful actions. 

Last week, I talked about the ego, and how the protection of ego causes us suffering.  This week, we’ll get to the root of the “ego”, which is nothing more than a collection of inaccurate thoughts and emotions that “we” are some permanent, some separate thing, something that needs protected and defending, that needs to be soothed and satisfied.  Once we begin to see through the illusion of ego, we SEE MORE CLEARLY that we are just an amalgamation of ever-changing processes, an arising and falling away of cells and thoughts and bio-chemical reactions that create the opportunity in each moment to think and choose differently.

We’ve all heard that our thoughts create our reality, but today we are going to learn three practices to change our thinking. 

I want to reiterate that this series of discussions is NOT about the happiness of pleasure or avoidance of pain.  We are working towards something far more enduring and even blissful.  We are learning to strengthen an innate sense of well-being that we can all experience, which is beyond thoughts, beyond emotions, beyond our external circumstances .

The story is told of a Tibetan Buddhist monk who was imprisoned by China for 20 years.  When he was finally released, he was asked what was most difficult about his time there.  He answered that he saw three people most days: someone who brought him food, someone who tortured him and a doctor  who kept him barely alive.   He said that he practiced focusing his mind, he practiced seeing see each of these three people with loving-kindness, compassion and equanimity, and he practiced simply sitting in choiceless awareness.  These three practices were difficult at times, but he said these three practices are what enabled him to survive. 

As we explore these practices to change our thinking, there is some helpful research that is being done in the field of addiction recovery.   An excellent psychiatric study, entitled “Craving to Quit”  by Brewer, Elwafi and Davis, details the positive impact of mindfulness training on eliminating unskillful behavior.  They outline three contributors to addictive behaviors:

·         Over-ruminations (mind-states)

·         Internal sensations (emotions, bodily sensations) those uncomfortable feelings that we try to run away from or wallow in.

·         External cues: past experiences that were pleasurable, neutral or painful—Matthieu Ricard says that looking to blame others/the world for our own suffering is the surest way to an unhappy life.

We practice uncoupling thoughts/emotions of craving and aversion from action. We can even develop a tolerance for craving and aversion.   We can monitor unskillful thoughts. emotions and automatic behaviors and objectively observe them rather than being sucked into habitual unskillful behaviors.

Three Powerful Practices:

·         Concentration (strengthening our ability to stay present)

·         Loving-kindness (cultivating positive mind-states)

·         Choiceless awareness (not taking things personally)

We have many opportunities to practice! First, we can practice in a controlled environment, like our meditation time here and yours at home, and secondly and equally powerful, we can practice in the moment of an afflictive thought or emotion arising.  It is powerful to practice in the eye of the storm.  With time, these practices become a new default mode of simply being present to whatever is arising.

I was so fortunate this week to get to experience a series of afflictive thoughts and emotions.  I was on the phone this week about a medical insurance claim that resulted in my owing $2,000.  I’m sure many of you can relate to the challenges of understanding medical costs and insurance plans.  Our policy here isn’t very good, but better than some.  However, I was uninformed about a certain loophole in the policy which resulted in this $2000 bill.  I had already spoken with one insurance representative about the problem, was about to just let it go, when the insurance policy manager called me “to smooth things over”.  I’d like to tell you that I was “smoothed over” but there was something about the conversation that caused my blood to boil—I began to have such a powerful craving to feel validated.  Even if I still had to pay the $2000, I still wanted her to validated my feelings, that it was understandable that someone could have made this mistake.  This was a classic case of craving and aversion.  Stewing in my thoughts of her insolence and my righteous indignation, I ended the call with clarifying to her that I was not smoothed over and slammed the phone down not once but three times. Bam Bam Bam!  Luckily, I did not break the phone, but I did have a moment of clarity.  I was causing this suffering by my thoughts and my emotional reaction.  Oh, this is what Matthieu is talking about!  And I actually began to giggle.  I was causing my own suffering. 

I had gotten the facts, nothing in the situation was going to change, and I was suffering from being so attached to my egoic craving for validation.   I just sat there seeing clearly that I was the cause of my present suffering.  It was quite liberating.   Before my practice, I would have stewed about it for days, taken it out on anyone who came to interact with me, would have blamed many and probably tried to find some way to “get back” at this woman who had caused me this terrible suffering!

In the article on addiction, Brewer emphasizes that realizing our thoughts and emotions only have power because we give it them is the powerful step towards a greater happiness.  If we try to merely distract ourselves from them, or ignore them, we might find temporary relief, but we are not getting to the core, to the source of the suffering—this is why many addiction recovery processes fail.   We HAVE to become disenchanted with these afflictive thoughts and emotions, to realize that we have the power to see through them and beyond them, then practice taking away that power.  Be aware of the power you are giving your thoughts.  Recognize that there is a better way of dealing with them.  Lama Surya Das says that the first step towards awakening is realizing that enlightenment is possible.  With this possibility, we can practice having a sense of curiosity about what thoughts and emotions really are.  Being curious about them turns out to work much more effectively than trying to beat them down or wallow in them.  Brewer uses the example that we have choices in our lives:  to continue banging our head against a wall  because that is what we have always done, OR to realize that we can do something positive like cultivating loving-kindness and peace.  Another method of dissolving the power of unskillful thoughts is finding ways to serve others, instead of myopically focusing on ourselves.  One practice that works well in AA is when a newly sober person is given a job to make the coffee or set out the chairs, a simple job that serves others.  How might you serve others to get beyond your limited ways of thinking?  With this new understanding, we then practice again and again.  Through consistent practice, we strengthen the mental muscle of choosing the more skillful path.  We actually are re-wiring our brain.

To broaden our perspective, Matthieu uses the visualization of the ocean, imagining soaring above the ocean of afflictive thoughts and emotions, instead of being caught in a boat on the surface, in the midst of the storm.