Stepping Twice Into the River

This has also been published on the Common Ground Meditation Center's Blog
http://blog.commongroundmeditation.org/reflection/stepping-twice-into-the-river/

I have a pesky habit of getting stuck in the past, of brooding over relationships and events, analyzing and wishing for a different outcome along the way. Sometimes, I find myself tête-à-tête with a particularly unsmooth shard from the past’s vast collection of broken glass and it becomes so unbearable, so beyond any acceptance or acknowledgement, that I have an overwhelming desire to do something, anything. As if doing is reflexively the right response. Clearly, it often is. We, beings, do a lot of doing after all and often the appropriate thing to do is act. But that’s not the same as doing something, anything. That burning desire to just do is really an inability to sit with things as they are. So before we know what, if anything, we can do, it’s often best to just be first.

When we reflect on the past, we can consider our actions and their consequences, or the actions of others and their consequences. Both may appear equally unbearable. In the reflection below, I will focus on the former.

In my reflection, I first consider the question of karma. As I understand it, karma represents the consequences of our actions. It’s not a simplistic notion of tit for tat. If I do something stupid, harmful or generally unskillful, it’s not that I will be punished for it at a later day. And if I do something wise, noble and skillful, it’s not that I will be rewarded for it at a later day (or better yet this afternoon). The universe is more subtle than that. What really matters here is the effect on our heart. Most of the time, we are not willing to really be present with the consequences of our actions. Most of the time, we do not notice, or we dismiss our actions and their consequences as no big deal. But these unreckoned-with consequences show up somewhere in our subconscious, adding hardness to our soul and sometimes even the physical body. On the other hand, if we were to truly be present with the reality of making an unkind comment, or manipulating a loved one out of greed, or any number of hurtful and small actions we are capable of, that just might become truly unbearable and lead us to want to do something. But what if we could just stay with the unbearable, the rather-be-forgotten, the awkward, the object of our brooding, big or small?

Mark (Mark Nunberg of Common Ground Meditation Center) once called mindfulness a universal solvent and it is. If we can truly stay with the consequences of our actions, we will perhaps see in them nothing more than the drama of the human experience, the actors strutting and fretting their hour upon the stage, to borrow from Shakespeare. Or as Buddhists would say - the impersonal nature of experience. If we can see it, see it with our heart, the impossibility of it will dissolve and love and forgiveness will naturally enter the stage.

I’ve spent a good portion of my life analyzing the past. It’s less of a pastime nowadays but I still look back quite a bit. I often have a difficult time accepting what was. But I'm finally beginning to realize that this truly is a futile exercise. What an incredibly simple insight. It’s in the past? Oh, you mean I cannot go back and tweak it? Just a bit, just to see? And would I really want to??? What I've finally realized is that it makes no sense to put the myself of today into the reality that the myself of yesterday lived in. The myself of yesterday created a different reality than the myself of today would. And even given the exact same set of conditions, the myself of yesterday had a different capacity to see them and to respond to them. Or as Heraclitus put it centuries ago, you cannot step twice into the same river. For other waters are ever flowing.

Imperfect

This has also been published on the Common Ground Meditation Center's Blog
http://blog.commongroundmeditation.org/reflection/the-imperfect-meditator-sound-familiar/

A couple of weeks ago during a weekly practice group, a woman shared that she is having a difficult time meditating recently. “I keep looking at my watch,” she said.

Her comment resonated with me. Except that I don’t just start looking at my watch. I stop meditating altogether. It used to bother me. As soon I develop a meditation routine, as soon as it has a rhythm, it gets derailed. It’s so irritating. I used to be outright furious at my failure to maintain a good meditation practice. Now I just accept it. Mark (Mark Nunberg of Common Ground Meditation Center) always reminds us during guided meditation that “it’s OK to start again.” It’s always OK to start the practice again.

It’s actually useful that my practice gets periodically derailed. Sometimes, it’s a sign that I’ve folded it too neatly into my life – it becomes too compartmentalized. I don’t really look at the intention anymore. I’m checking meditation off the list. And at other times, it’s simply that the best I can do is a few moments of reflection or some writing. At these times, what’s difficult is to acknowledge my limits-- to be OK with my quintessential imperfection.

Whenever I reproach myself for not meditating, not meditating enough, not meditating well enough, whenever I tell myself that I should, that I’m somehow failing, I try to look at the person who is wagging her finger and the person who finds clarity so difficult. What I find is very little compassion and much hardness. Staying with that hardness is what makes sense at these moments – using mindfulness as a universal solvent, as Mark once described it.

When I return to meditation, it’s rarely in the prodigal son (or daughter in my case) type of a way. It’s simply that I stumble upon the realization that it’s about things as they are and the desire to see things clearly. I actually want to meditate because I’m genuinely interested. And, secretly, I’m always relieved when I feel that way.

Of course, the question is, how do I maintain continuity in my practice through these ups and downs, how do I deepen my practice and how do I keep from rationalizing unskillful behavior as simply good-for-me-within-my-limits? What’s the balance between making myself meditate come hell or high water and allowing my meditation practice to evolve naturally?

For me, it’s about an intention. I have a deep intention to achieve non-attachment. This intention, however, is buried under layers and layers of humanness. I know I can’t just bulldoze my way through. I have work to do so on all levels of my being and sometimes what I need to focus on is something closer to the surface.

I do recognize, even during times of outright aversion to meditation, that meditation is good for me. And I do make myself maintain some continuity. One of them is coming to Common Ground. Sometimes, that’s all I ask of myself. I just ask myself to show up and ask myself to do whatever it is I’m capable of at that time. It makes sense.