PC - 6 - Facing the Fear of Uncertainty

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In her book, Comfortable with Uncertainty, Pema Chodron gives us encouragement to go beyond our fearful reactions to the thoughts, emotions, people and situations that scare us.  She even suggests that we can learn to smile at fear.  A large group of people were asked about what they feared most, and when given the choice between physical pain and uncertainty, an overwhelming majority of people were more afraid of uncertainty than they were of physical pain.  It seems that when faced with not knowing, most of us become afraid. Training our minds to sit with uncertainty, with not knowing, is a valuable life skill and part of the Buddhist practice.  By sitting with uncertainty, we can more clearly see what is happening and make better choices in our lives. 

How do our brains react to the unknown?  When presented with a new experience, our brains try to find something to relate it to, something in our past experience or what we’ve been told.  For most of us, we are continually trying to reinforce whatever current view of the world that we already have. If we think that we are unlucky in love or in life, we unconsciously reinforce that story.  Lama Surya Das calls these responses the dysfunctional myths we live by.                                          

How we experience life is based on the stories we make up about it. So what are the stories that you tell yourself about you and your life?  Some of you may have heard or read this following story:

The Window” (Author unknown)

·        During the Vietnam war, Two young men were injured, both seriously, and were put in the same hospital room.

·        One of them had injured his spine and was unable to get out of the bed; his eyes temporarily damaged by shrapnel, his eyes were covered with bandages.

·        The other young man had fluid on his lungs and was required to sit up in his bed for an hour a day to drain the fluid. His bed was next to the room's only window.

·        The men talked for hours on end. They talk about their families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the service. And every afternoon when the man in the bed next to the window would sit up to clear the fluid from his lungs, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

·         The man with the bandaged eyes would live for those one-hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the outside world. The man told him about the lovely park visible outside. Ducks and swans swam on the water while children played on the playground. It was springtime, so many people were outside, lovers walked arm in arm amid flowers of every color of the rainbow. Grand old trees graced the landscape, and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance. As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room would bask in the stories and imagine the picturesque scene.

·        One warm afternoon while the one man by the window was describing another beautiful day, the man with his eyes covered knew that his bandages would soon come off and he was suddenly irritated that he didn’t have the bed by the window.  Unexpectedly, he thought:  “Why should he have all the pleasure of seeing everything while I never get to see anything? It didn't seem fair. As the thought simmered in his mind, the man felt ashamed at first. But as the days passed and he missed seeing more sights, his envy devolved into resentment and soon made him angry and irritable. He began to brood and found himself unable to sleep. He should be by that window - and those thoughts now haunted his mind.

·        Late one night, as he lying in his bed, the young man by the window began to cough. He was choking on the fluid in his lungs. The other young man listened as the he gasped for help and groped for the button to call the nurse. Listening from across the room, the other man never moved, never pushed his own button which would have brought the nurse running. In less than five minutes, the coughing and choking stopped, along with the sound of breathing. Then there was only deathly silence.

·        The following morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths. When she found the lifeless body of the man by the window, she was or course saddened and called the hospital attendant to take it away--no words, no fuss. A few days later, with the bandages removed from his eyes, the man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

·        Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look out the window. Finally, he would have the joy of seeing it all himself. He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed. It faced a blank wall.

This is what we humans often do.  We make up stories to fill in the blanks of the things we don’t really know.  We look at life from the lens of our past experiences and look for reinforcement of what we already think is true.

"We must never forget that it is through our actions, words, and thoughts that we always have a choice about living." -Sogyal Rinpoche

It is a choice, conscious or unconscious, that we allow ourselves to be influenced by our past experiences or by what others tell us to be true. There is evidence of this fact. Researchers have documented that women at the turn of the 20th century commonly reported a specific set of symptoms, including leg paralysis, temporary blindness, and facial tics. These symptoms happened to fit the well-publicized and accepted definition of something called “hysteria”.  Researchers found that patients unconsciously try to produce symptoms that will correspond to the medical diagnostics of the time. A cultural molding of the unconscious happens.

What stories are you creating that are forming your experience of living?  We may not always have a choice about what happens to us, but every one of us is choosing how to live with whatever arises. 

How we choose to perceive a situation is the most powerful tool that we have in life. We can practice having the courage to examine our stories and ask the question, “What is the truth?”  What would it be like to simply to experience each moment as fresh and new?

"A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart." -Johann Von Goethe