Letting go - 6 - Mindlessness

(For Podcast, click here.  For ITunes version, click here)

Like this blog?  Consider donating online (click here) to contribute to the sustainability of the Temple Buddhist Center and American Buddhism. Together we can truly change the world, starting with ourselves and the world around us!

This morning we continue a series of talks based on the book by Lama Surya Das, entitled, Letting Go of the Person you Used to Be.  The Eighth chapter is entitled “Mindful and Wise”.  Ahh, if we had just all been mindful every moment up until this moment, there wouldn’t be this person that we used to be that we are suddenly waking up and wondering,  “how on earth did I get here?”  So, oddly, today I thought we could talk about the realities of life within the context of the fact that most of us, okay at least I can say for me, have had moments, minutes, months or even years where I either sleep walked through my life or responded in old conditioned ways that caused me to find myself in a situation that no longer matched my sense of who I truly am, or at least who or what my intention is to be.  I’m hoping that some of you can relate to this cautionary tale I’m about to share.

The Buddhist teachings are training us to be in the moment; my Buddhist teacher encourages us to NOW ourselves, and these practices can be so wonderfully helpful.  AND, I know for me, when I began this journey of mindfulness, the first thing that happened is I awoke to all the past mistakes I’d made, one of whom I was living with at that very moment!  Awakening to our true nature , then creating a life built on the foundation of mindfulness, often requires a re-assessment of thoughts and decisions that we have had in the past and that we are now living with in the present. 

We first awaken and ask, “How do I create for myself a mindfully aware life, with the starting point being today, perhaps in the middle of a life that I may have unintentionally created?”  I have found this to be a profoundly difficult question for myself, one without a quick fix or answer.

The Buddha was asked what makes reality so difficult to see?  He replied in this way, “It is ignorance which smothers, and it is heedlessness and greed which makes reality invisible.  The hunger of desire pollutes and obscures the world, and the great source of fear is the pain of suffering.”  When asked the next question of how we can we make reality visible? The Buddha replied simply, “Mindful awareness”.

There’s a lot to digest in that small passage.  First, what makes reality so difficult to see?  The Buddha describe the three poisons: ignorance, craving and aversion.  We can look at how each of these conditioned responses may cause us to live on auto-pilot and result in us ending up where we didn’t mean to go. 

In order to drive this point home, I’m going to simply share one example from my own life that sadly includes all three of these poisons.  When my daughter was young, I was overwhelmed by being a single mom.  Aversion to not having enough money and being alone and scared drove me to seek a partner, seeking outside of myself someone who could make me feel safe and cared for.  Now, it’s lovely to find someone who cherishes you and cares for you, but the distinction in the Buddhist teachings is that it is in fact mindless to think that someone else can solely provide a sense of safety and security for us if we can’t experience it from within.  It would be so lovely if that were true, and it’s nice to find someone to be in your life who wants to take care of you, BUT…the Big Buddhist But…is that if we are not able to create that sense of safety and security within ourselves, no one else is going to quite do a good enough job.  

My fear of suffering caused me to choose someone who I thought offered the most security and safety, for myself and for my daughter.  The ironic part of this story is that this person who I chose, ended up losing his job twice and started a business that failed so badly that he was sued for millions of dollars.  When I mindlessly tried to avoid the pain of insecurity and fear of my finances by finding someone else to provide that for me, what I got was the pain of insecurity and fear of finances.  I will tell you the truth—the irony of this outcome almost (almost...) caused me to laugh out loud, each time I went to our mailbox and found another letter about someone suing us for some additional large sum of money.  So, I bare my past to you, and encourage you to consider how you might have some aversion or fear that is driving mindless thoughts, words, actions.  What are those fears and anxieties that are mindlessly leading you in a direction you do not want to go?

Second, we can look at the poison of craving.  During this particularly difficult period in my life, I hit the trifecta of poisons!  Not only was I fearful of suffering, I was craving the “good life”.  I had grown up in a financially struggling home—we always had food on the table and clothes to wear, but my parents struggled to make ends meet.  When I graduated from high school and went on to college, I craved the best that life had to offer .  I was born just after the generation that wanted lots of free love and peace.  My generation wanted money and Mercedes!  What fun!  Lavish trips, luxury cars, hoity-toity houses—Not that there is anything wrong with these items in and of themselves.  In the Buddha’s time, he often counseled kings and businessmen about bringing mindfulness to each and every decision they made.  Being in a position of power can create an opportunity to do great good, as long as craving and greed are left out of the process!  

There is a common misunderstanding about Buddhism--that desire in and of itself is bad.  The teachings on this point are clear—desire is not what gets us into situations of mindlessness—it is the craving for a certain outcome, the need for a specific result, the inability to live without, certain things, people and activities.  Reflect for yourself and your own life. What do you desire?  And what are you craving?  What is it that you think you can’t live without?

For me, I craved being the perfect couple in the perfect house with the perfect jobs and the perfect children.  Anyone who has ever been in a relationship or had a child or even knows a child, knows that these expectations were a recipe for disaster.  And it wasn’t the kind of disaster that happened overnight.  It was the kind of disaster that slowly unfolded day after day, week after week, year after year.  Until 15 years later, when I had returned to my Buddhist practice and begun to awaken again to living in each moment, I realized that I was way down a rabbit hole that was not my desired location, not where I had hoped to be when I was 18 and thinking about how I wanted my life to turn out.

The third poison is ignorance.  Yes, my craving and aversion contributed to my life of misery.  But, ignorance, that good old ignorance, was a big contributor as well.  Had I not seen the warning signs in myself and my partner?  Had he changed into someone else right before my very eyes?  I might be able to feel some justification about my suffering if that was the case, but sadly nope.  I chose to ignore the reality of the situation early on, the reality of my own dysfunctional behavior and that of my partner.  I learned that two dysfunctional people do not somehow magically make one function person  J

I slowly awoke to the fact that I was no longer the person I used to be, and was in a relationship that was badly in need of work.  We tried going to counseling but it was clear that each of us was now going in a very different direction.  In my situation, based on being fully, mindfully aware, I came to the conclusion that it couldn’t be fixed.  But, here was this person next to me, who I had sold a bill of goods to, who wanted those things that I had once wanted.  It was I who was changing, who saw myself and the world differently.  Did he “deserve” to be harmed by my new perspective?  The answer is clearly “no”, but the reality was that I could no longer continue to live up to my part of the old bargain.

I had to do the most difficult part of this entire process—I had to hurt another person to get honest with myself, to change my course of direction, to step into the person that I knew I was becoming.  And for that, I am deeply saddened and sorry.  I ask that person to forgive me for what I put them through.  Regardless of whose fault it was, it was still a painful situation to undo.

Letting go of the person you used to be ain’t easy.  When we become mindfully aware, we will more clearly see the damage of our past thoughts, words and actions.  You might find yourself at a crossroads that you didn’t want to face.  The “getting honest with yourself and others” can be a painful process and yet still the most profound and humbling thing I still endeavor to do every day.

The truth is that when I created a life of mindful awareness, a wisdom did arise within me, the wisdom to see who and what I truly was, and what and who I wanted in my life.  And I found a relationship that became the love of my life.  I offer these encouraging words ONLY because I totally and completely screwed up every relationship in my life until I found these Buddhist teachings, and then I found love and profound peace and deep meaningful friendships.  And most days I still fall asleep and must re-awaken again and again.  But, I want so much to offer encouragement and support to each and every one of you.  I jokingly say, “Heck if I can do it, anyone can!”