October 16, 2010 Saturday Morning, Venture Fourth, Part 1
Pain and Suffering
Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. It is an exquisite morning, very beautiful. And the trees up there are so filled with light, not just the sunlight in them but their own internal energy. Very beautiful.
So we’re going to start with Chapter 4. I’m going to talk a bit about each chapter and the thoughts I have on each chapter. Invite some dialogue with you.
Opening to suffering, opening to compassion. Donald speaks of the distinction between pain and suffering, and I think this is a familiar distinction to all of you. The words in his chapter are very clear so I don’t want to explain what he has written, just to expand on it a bit.
He speaks of the Buddha’s story of the two arrows. This is something we frequently emphasize in practice. The object arises. Contact and consciousness of the contact. Let’s say in this case, physical or emotional or mental pain.
So there’s an object. Maybe you’ve broken your toe and it’s throbbing. There’s body awareness, contact with that object of the toe that’s throbbing, consciousness. The experience the feeling is unpleasant– probably, most body pain is experienced as unpleasant. Unpleasant feeling.
There’s a perception of what it is– “Ah, this is my broken toe throbbing.” Unpleasant. There’s a subtle shift where you begin to steel yourself, pushing away that unpleasant, pushing away that throbbing, wanting to be someplace else. The body sensation is pain. The wanting to be someplace else with things different than they are is suffering.
We notice the shift. The object is no longer the throbbing of the toe, no longer that bare sensation. Rather, the primary object at this point is that contracted experience, withdrawing from the experience, pushing it away, armoring.
What’s important here is to know which object is which. When a physical sensation is predominant, you bring attention to it. You know how to bring gentle attention to an object. The difficulty many of you get into, and I’m using a physical sensation here because it’s sometimes easier to see but the same is true for a mental object, the difficulty is that the shift comes. The physical sensation is no longer the predominant object. Either/or, you hold on to the physical sensation and push away the aversion to the sensation, or you move to the aversion but there is a belief, “I should not be feeling aversion. After all, I’ve been meditating for 17 years, I ought to do better.”
At that point the aversion is no longer predominant, the judging mind is predominant, a different form of aversion. It’s no longer aversion to that physical object, it’s aversion to the aversion, really. Judging. It’s still, “I don’t want this,” and with “I don’t want this,” there’s suffering.
I am not going to suggest that you should want pain. There’s a difference between being present with it and knowing, “This has arisen from conditions. It’s impermanent, not self. It will pass when the conditions pass and I will breathe with it and hold space for it.” That’s not wanting it, that’s just being present.
So I’m not suggesting you will want the unpleasant object so much as that you learn from your deep wisdom practice, you learn, “It’s simply the product of conditions, and whether I want it or not is irrelevant. There’s nothing I can do about it right now but open my heart to it and hold space.”
Donald goes on in the chapter to speak on how we open our hearts to an object. He says on page 83, he talks about facing our pain directly. He was speaking of his retreat experience and says, “When I was willing to face that fear, the fear left. According to Jung, when we do not face our difficulties with consciousness they are projected outward and manifest themselves as demons or fate. But when we face our inner demons, we take back, as it were, our projections. We diminish the stock of objects and situations in the world that would cause us to feel fear, discovering that many of them are quite imaginary. When we face our pain directly, much of it is actually removed or transformed.”
We have the beautiful tale of Milarepa, which I know all of you have heard from me probably several times, but it bears repeating here. Milarepa was sitting in the mountain cave meditating and the demons of fear, anger, and greed appeared. He looked up at them and said, “Come in, I’ve been expecting you.”
Now (inaudible) to be demons, they were hideous. The skin hung in shreds from the bones, gore dripped out. They had a foul smell. Their bloody knives and weapons rattled at their sides. Their bones rattled within. Their breath stank. “Aren’t you afraid of us?” they said. “No, your hideous appearance only reminds me to be aware, to have mercy. Come in and have tea.”
To me an important part of the story is that he invites them in to sit and have tea but not to get into a dialogue. “Sit and have tea. Shhh! We’re not going to discuss your horrible plans for me, I’m not going to get caught in your stories. I see you as you are, as a projection of my mind. I welcome you. I do not beat you with a stick to chase you away. I do not flee from you. But I will not get caught up in a dialogue with you.”
I’d like to hear from you. Is there anybody who is still confused about the difference between pain and suffering? If so, we can discuss it. How do you face your demons? What gives you the courage, the wisdom and the courage and the love, to face your demons? What works? So let us hear from you.
Q: I didn’t speak yesterday, last night, because I was still processing my day, which was filled with itty bitty shitty committee of self-criticisms, comparisons, negative thoughts. It was an amazing shift from the day before. But I think it happened because there was a lot of busy-ness yesterday and so I was kind of back off-center. And with the (inaudible) of things we had to get done in the kitchen I was afraid to leave and go, or I didn’t feel I should leave and go (inaudible).
So anyway, I woke up about 3 o’clock this morning and realized a lot of old shame was coming up from childhood, and other experiences that I’ve had (on my own), unworthiness. I faced it and sat with it for awhile, and nothing shifted. And so what finally seemed to shift things this morning was finding things to be grateful for and expressing, starting to think about the love I have to give. And as I started to think about the love I had to give, I could soften around myself.
So just facing the demons sometimes will shift it for me. What helped me to get into that place of the loving embrace for myself and the demons <inaudible> and shame, was to start giving out love, and then I was able to do it/give it for myself.
Aaron: Thank you.
Q: I had the experience of facing the habit energies and buttons and really understanding them. And then over time, seeing the diminishing of the strength of those habit energies. I imagined them being shot full of holes like Swiss cheese and they are getting thinner and lighter. So having had this experience over time is encouraging.
Q: When I sit with what gives me the courage to face demons, I think it’s my deepest heart’s intention that I expressed to you earlier at another intensive. And because of that deepest intention for freedom and service there are no exit doors, (inaudible) Whatever arises must be faced.
And last night I saw that there is a force of love behind that that goes way beyond any kind of personal self, that is pure love, that brings the demons and allows the demons to be faced, so that this can be fully used in service here. I was moved to (inaudible) by seeing the depth of the love in all this. It encourages me to embrace the demons even more, because as I did that yesterday, that deeper seeing came and the heart opened even more. And over time I have come to know that facing the suffering is a lot easier than running away from it.
Aaron: Thank you. I would add to that, the part that Q touches on but I’d like to speak it deeper. Your deep intention to non-harm, the bodhisattva vow, the deep inner work that you did through the whole first year, looking at the traits like responsibility and humility, compassion and so forth, your commitment to investigate those traits and to see what strengthens them, you lived them as true as you could, all of this supports your willingness to go into that fearful place because there comes a point when you really can’t let yourself back out. It’s no longer seen as kindness to yourself or others to run from what scares you.
The choice, then, is not made from force and pushing yourself into what scares you but through love and inviting yourself to look at what scares you. And there’s a vast difference between that forceful pushing and opening with love.
Q: For me it is a process. First I seem to be reactive. I’m angry, note the fire. Sometimes run from it. But ultimately I face it. The fire has to be recognized before I truly can face it and comprehend what it’s all about. Ultimately love and compassion come through, sometimes it’s an hour, sometimes it’s a day, but usually no more than 2 or 3 days.
Q: For me when I sit and open to difficult emotions, much of my work is around the aversion, pushing away, not wanting to sit with the pain or fear. And what I come to see is that aversion of the aversion is the desire to fix it or change it. Once I saw that it was very helpful because I could just note that as aversion and sit with that deep desire to change or fix the pain. And as I sat with that it allowed me to open to an even deeper level of pain (inaudible) through aversion. So that distinction has helped me very much. Not fall into trying to fix or change the pain. “Oh, if I just use the elements here, I can make it go away. Oh, if I just use metta, I can make it go away.” But just to open without any doing and then compassion naturally arises.
Aaron: Thank you. This raises an important question. When do we simply sit with it as it is and when do we work with the elements, your guides, power animals, breath, the breathwork, chanting, any of these tools? When do you shift into a formal metta practice? When do you go and take a walk? Any thoughts on that?
Q: I like J’s idea of process, sitting with it (inaudible) the recognition that the resistance, because we’re not fighting the resistance, we’re not resisting the resistance, so there’s comfort with it. And we’re not forcing it but we’re more inviting from a gentle place, inviting from a gentle place.
Aaron: What if you sit with it and you just keep sitting with it and you don’t see the resistance, so there’s a sense of forcing yourself to be present with it? When is it more skillful to step back from saying, “I will open my heart to this” and invite some of these supports? How do the supports work to ready you to come back to the object with a more open heart?
Q: I think it’s a very intuitive process and that there’s no one answer that fits all situations. If mindfulness is strong, often I can start to “transmute” the negativity because I’m not concerned with getting rid of the negativity, I can just do the job, kind of like the way that I just <>. But in other cases when I’m grasping after a different experience of the world, I have to watch that grasping and the pain before I can try to chant or ask for help to be with the problem. Often asking for help is seeing the problem more deeply, not trying to change it.
Aaron: Thank you.
(Discussion about turning off the blower to make it easier for the transcriber to hear. Aaron suggests passing around the mic. They decide to turn the blower off, which does make voices louder and clearer, and close the window upstairs.)
Q: For the past month I’ve been dealing with body cramps, all over my body but most frequently in my hands or my legs, and often very much at night when sleeping. So I would usually jump out of bed and try to bend my leg back and my feet back the way they should be, or grab a pill and pop a pill. I thought about just accepting this, just opening up and letting it be. And the immediate experience of that is the sharpness of the pain dulls a little. It doesn’t go away. It’s living with it. And (previous Q) just upset the basket…but I’m in a conflict now because you said, you know, you don’t want the pain. So what alternative, how do you navigate that seemingly rejection of it or a strategy of minimizing it.
Aaron: Let us save that question for later today when we talk about views and attachment to views, such as there shouldn’t be pain. How we work with those views.
Consider when there’s something very painful and we don’t want it, there can be a, it’s the difference between intention and attachment to intention. Intention is a very openhearted energy. There’s little contraction in it. There’s no grasping, just inviting. When there is grasping or aversion, the energy field contracts. Then you might try to force yourself– “I should stay with this pain, I should go right into it.” But there’s a lot of self in that, pushing the self into “I should do this.”
What you are inviting when you shift into working with the elements or the chakras or your guides or chanting or any other kind of practice, you’re not doing the practice to make yourself be ready to face the pain, you’re doing the practice because you see that the whole body and mind are contracted into self and that self cannot face the pain, only the open heart can face the pain. So you begin to do the practices that are more helpful to allow the heart and energy field to reopen so that you go back into a place of center which is able, then, to go into the pain without so much self.
It is intuitive but it’s also a product of deep mindfulness and knowing what’s what, especially just knowing the distinction between resting in awareness, either resting in awareness or access concentration, centered, empty, and the experience of the small self coming back.
We’ve worked a lot with just resting in awareness. When you rest in awareness, resting in rigpa, everything is open. The whole energy field is open, the mind is open, there’s no sense of a self, no separation between self and object. Then something comes in and recreates that illusion of separation. When awareness can note that and say, “Ah, contracting; that which is aware of contracting is not contracted.” It may be that you will slip back into that uncontractedness.
If you don’t, that’s the moment where you have to watch that the small self doesn’t come in and say, “Oh, I must,” and begin to force it, but asks– I don’t want to say, “How can I invite spaciousness?”, spaciousness is always there– how can I invite myself into the experience of spaciousness? How can I step a bit more out of the small self and into the pure awareness mind?
Then it may help to ask your guides or power animals for support, or to do chanting or to do metta or karuna practice. Just take a walk and sit in the woods, do some yoga, do work with the elements or chakras. You’re not doing those from a place that says, “I must do this to reopen so I can face my pain,” you’re doing it saying, “I see the contraction right now and this is the deepest kindness I know to this human, to work in a skillful way to invite back my experience of my wholeness and unlimitedness.”
Other questions?
Q: So it seems my question was related (inaudible). There’s the work we do with karmic knots where like Milarepa, Milarepa invites the demon (inaudible). And there’s a different type of work, and I’m reminded of an Emerald Isle lesson working with karmic knots where we just invite light. And for me that is seeing the split between me and other and just not getting caught in that. So to repeat, there’s being mindful, for me, (inaudible) sensation, and I can invite that in and be mindful of it and try to watch aversion to it.
And then I can work with it by just seeing the whole back and forth and me and other and letting go of that, and kind of resting in rigpa. So the question here is, do both of those things do the work, both of those methods do the work of releasing that habitual pattern?
Aaron: I want to be clear on your question: can you state “do this and that both do the work?” Tell me in precise words what is the this and the that.
Q: Okay. One side is being mindful of pain, being present with pain, inviting it in, and watching self contracting around that. The that, the other side, is seeing any separation any mental separation, any separation, it’s almost like a supramundane– you see the conditions back and forth, me and other, and you just step back from that. And you move into rigpa. Do they both undo the habitual pattern?
Aaron: When a mind is going back and forth, resting in rigpa, coming back into an illusion of separation, rigpa sees the illusion of separation. Nevertheless, it arises. Arrogance tries to say, “It will not arise. I’ll control it.” Kindness says, “Ah, it still arises. The conditions are not yet purified.” When it arises, this human feels pain, or this human suffers, or both.
“I offer compassion to this human.” This is the merging of wisdom and compassion. From the wisdom mind of rigpa, there’s no self or other. The small self falls back into the illusion of separation. Then awareness itself offers compassion to that small self, to that human experience, and it’s that mix of wisdom and compassion that resolves the karma. It cannot just be one or the other because to pull in either side alone involves the ego and force. It’s only when you bring them together that you let go of force and replace force with kindness and clear seeing.
I have the image here of a shoe. When you lace your shoe, do you lace it only through the right side eyelets?
We’ll talk more this afternoon or later this morning about the element of akasha, about karma and so forth. Let’s just take this step by step for now.
In Chapter 5 he brings up the question, what myth do we carry about loving oneself as selfish? There’s a lot of material in Chapter 5. We could spend a day on each of these chapters. I know you’ve read them and been practicing the material in them. Let’s just look at this one question for a bit.
It’s an essential question that you were all facing in the past 2 days as you did some really hard work, and were asked also to take care of yourself, to stop when there was need to stop, to meditate when the self got strongly into it, to pause and see what that was about. And a number of you said to me, “It feels selfish to do that. Everybody is working.”
So I think it’s very important to see that you cannot take care of others unless you take care of yourself. And at a deeper level there is no self or other. As long as you approach service in the world, whether it be making dinner for your family or going off and building a house with Habitat, whatever it is you’re doing in the world, as long as you approach that from a place of “Am I doing it well enough? If I do this for others will I then get what I need?” as long as there’s any resentment or fear that’s not attended to, it both disrupts the flow of the energy that we might call service and it creates unwholesome karma.
Selfishness comes from a place of fear. “My needs will not be met.” What is the balance or antidote to selfishness?
Q: Generosity.
Aaron: Generosity, what else? Compassion.
Q: Self-care.
Aaron: Self-care. Others?
Q: Gratitude.
Aaron: Gratitude. Again it must be intuitive. The important thing is that you are not trying to fix the feeling of selfishness or self-need but to bring loving attention to it and to ask, “What fear or old mind habit is at the root of this? And how can I take care of it? What part of me am I not allowing myself to hear? If I can’t hear that in me, I can’t hear it in others.”
Selfishness is really a myth in many ways. It’s simply the habitual pattern that comes up when you are not hearing yourself. So like the 2-year-old saying, “Me! Me! Me!” it starts to get louder because you’re not listening. And I repeat, if you can’t hear that pain in yourself, how can you hear it in others? We’re back to the same question, what allows the heart to open and allow the experience of that pain? To hear that pain fully?
In Cosmic Healing Barbara reflects in a number of places about what she is learning, <> used to learn about her deafness, and the part of her that did not want to hear the pain of the world. She notes that this did not cause the deafness, the deafness had many causes, but it’s one karmic thread that needed to be attended to. What invites full willingness to hear the pain of the world? Is one willing to feel and hear one’s own pain and to see that the pain of the world and one’s own pain are the same thing?
There may be specific differences. This one may be starving and that one may be being brutalized by war. Nevertheless, it’s the pain of the human being that’s not living with love and respect and that cries out for help. When your inner being cries out for help, how do you respond?
Again, inviting some discussion.
Q: I mentioned before that this past year had been, there had been strong emphasis on learning the deeper meanings of faith and trust, and really seeing that everything is good. And I think that seeing more deeply into that really gives me the courage to engage with the pain or, I think, the pain is one word but also the contractedness. And I think another thing that’s very helpful for me is, having gone through a few cycles of coming out on the other side and seeing that there is another side, that there is the other side, that there is the cessation of the suffering around specific pains or whatever it is, I think that’s very helpful.
What I find that, in terms of the process, as it goes, starting with a certain recognition that everything is good and then using that, it’s not quite accurate to say it that way… the next step for me is just generally opening up and relaxing. And I can feel it in my body. I mean, there’s even a physical contractedness as well as an energy contractedness that I feel just opens up. And from there being present with whatever it is… just becomes, I don’t have to do anything beyond that, really, I just have to be resting in that spaciousness and that uncontractedness. It doesn’t feel like I need to do much beyond that, things kind of take care of themselves beyond that.
Aaron: Thank you. What Q has said takes us back to a staple of your vipassana and pure awareness practice, knowing the simultaneity of the relative and ultimate. At first this is a matter of faith but as you practice you begin to see that you do not move from a closed heart to an open heart any more than the day moves from there being a clear blue sky and sunshine to cloudiness. Clouds may cover the clear blue sky and sun, but the clear blue sky and sun are always there.
As your practice deepens each of you have had deep experiences of emptiness and dissolution of the ego and body. Each of you have experienced the spaciousness of the true self. You may not be able to rest there stably. You may not be able to say, “Oh, let’s turn that back on,” but you know it’s there, it’s no longer a matter of faith that it’s there.
It’s important to begin to ask yourself when you’re caught in a place of darkness, “Why am I choosing to stay in this darkness, at some level, rather than remembering the light?” As soon as you remember the light, you’re back in the light–can you see that? The storm clouds may still be out there but you’re no longer locked into them.
So it’s valuable to look at the habitual patterning that locks oneself into a place of some negativity or fear or darkness simply because this is the old conditioning of so many lifetimes. We go back, as it were, to the myth of the Garden of Eden, the being that in some way felt itself impure, unworthy to live in the divine light, to know its own divinity. And so it separated, seeing that which it thought of as divine and radiant and pure and seeing the self as impure.
For most of you, not just you here but for most humans, the rest has been a passageway back into knowing that innate purity and divinity of the self, that innate perfection. As long as you think you’re on a linear path where someday you will come to manifest that innate perfection, you’re always doing. But when you stop and be, just resting in that light, in that radiance, you’re already there, and you all know that from your meditation experience.
So, reflect a bit. Knowing that, why do I choose otherwise? Why do I choose to believe in the myth of my own limitedness and failure?
Others who would like to speak to this?
Q: I think times when I find myself in pain and suffering it’s because I’ve separated myself. And when I remember the support that’s around me, things become so much clearer. Support in terms of sangha, like the sangha here, and guides.
Last night when we went around and Barbara asked if anyone else wanted to say anything, (inaudible). And I was able to say no from a place of kindness to myself. And that was a big deal because it’s one of the things I deal with all my life, from childhood, is people telling me to speak up and talk more. So there’s a lot of views and stories around that, and a lot of shame and guilt comes up. Being able to contribute, not being able to speak my truth. But last night with the support and the energy that was in this room it was very natural to say no from a place of kindness. And if I can remember that kind of support of the sangha, the physical sangha and the sangha of the heart, the sangha of the spirit, then that’s a tremendous help when I feel a lot of pain, it helps to support.
Aaron: Thank you. It’s important to remember that the choice is not, to speak or not to speak, the choice is simply to follow one’s heart. If the heart says speak then one can speak. If the heart says not now, then one can be quiet. And they’re both being true to your innate radiance and light.
Q: When you asked the question, “How do we relate to our pain?” I reflected on how I was yesterday and how I didn’t stop, I didn’t take time for myself, and how strongly conditioned I’ve been to be stoic and to endure through a kind of muscular perseverance. Initially the abuses of my childhood, but just the pains <of being in life> through a kind of overriding mental and muscular control that you spoke to me about yesterday when we met. I’m at a loss right now in terms of how to be with it or what to do about it except to just be aware that this has been so and it’s not satisfactory, and it’s not taking care of myself in a real way.
Aaron: Brother, may I suggest that you do a practice today and tomorrow and in an ongoing way if it’s useful, of literally pausing, maybe the walking through the doorway practice would be a good one. Every time you walk through a doorway, every time, pause and take 3 breaths. Ask yourself, “What is my highest intention right now?” Just let it bring you back to kindness, to be kind to myself and all beings. Perhaps to stir the soup, that’s my intention walking through the doorway right now, or to get a drink of water. But there will be deeper intention that you allow to come forth. You could ask, what is my highest intention and am I at this moment inviting the manifestation of that intention?
Like preparing soup, tasting it. What does it need now? Does it need a little salt, a little herb seasoning? What does it need? What does this soup you’re cooking in your life, what does it need? Sometimes it may need more kindness or more patience, more gentleness. Sometimes it may need more mindful attention to, “I’m the tough guy,” or some kind of story that has come.
I’m suggesting that doorway practice just because that’s something you do several times a day. And it doesn’t take long but it re-centers you over and over, just brings you back to, “What’s going on here? What’s happening in this heart and mind and body in this moment? Am I working toward my highest intentions here or am I sabotaging myself? And if I’m sabotaging myself, can I invite some mercy to this human being?” Does that sound workable?
Let us pause here. Obviously, much that we haven’t covered. We’ll take a 15 minute break and come back and begin to look at Chapter 6, some of the questions that have been raised. Questions about beliefs, knowing and not knowing, attachment to views, and so forth. You may talk, we’re not in silence.
(break, taping ends)