For Saturday’s webinar we were asked to reflect on the question, “Is the body great or small?”. I noticed the frustration I felt with the way the question was formulated and my internal resistance toward setting a label, defining the body in terms of it’s size. As soon as I said something about the size, it became reduced to that – size, something relative, a concept. The body itself did not seem to matter that much any more. It held no mystery.
Still, in our lives we do have to measure, to compare. “Is the practice great or small?”. If I don’t measure it, how do I even know if I’ve moved at all or am still stuck on the same spot? How could I measure my practice? Not in hours spent on the cushion, or the number of Dharma books I read or retreats I attended. I guess ultimately it was about the question, What is it that I want from my practice?
I received a few comments to my previous post, some of them not on this page. What they had in common was the idea that we need others because we love them and needing people was in fact not so bad. In short: we need to need people. I believe that the idea that some degree of dependency in a relationship is OK aside from the cultural underpinning is also backed up by another strong belief: if we don’t need others we will end up being cold-hearted and detached people and that is not an attractive picture. Likewise, if others don’t need us, we will end up lonely and unappreciated.
Really?
What about the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela or other individuals who has shown enormous compassion to their fellow humans and do not strike me as cold, detached and non-caring? Nor do they appear(ed) to be lonley and unappreciated. It is easy to think that once we take away our dependency on others, there will be nothing left.
Let me say from the start: when it comes to romantic love, I was cultured into the whole you-complete-me belief through films, books and some ideas that basically made it impossible to have a healthy relationship. I grew up in a culture where jealousy was (and still is) taken as a sign of loving someone and even encouraged (especially in men). The idea that loving someone involves an emotional attachment pervades many cultures but what does it actually imply? It means I depend on another human being for happiness. I depend on you for my happiness. How does this sound for responsibility?
How much is this moment worth to me? To get a sense of worth of something I need to compare it to something else, something on the same scale.I would probably value the moment I take a step into the emptiness of the open sky with a parachute on my back more than a quiet morning in the kitchen when I am waiting for my espresso to be ready. At least today when I feel I could use more action .
Most of our awake time I spend comparing stuff, assigning value to things, events and experiences based on how I feel about them at a particular time. It is easy to forget that all of those also have absolute value, outside myself and my story. Every single experience, event or thing is unique and therefore comparing it to the next one does not make sense.
If we remembered about the absolute value of everything, lots of anxiety in our lives would dissipate because at its root lies comparison, preferences and discrimination of one thing over another. When we take relative value of things for their absolute value, we end up chasing those things or experiences we value higher than others. This is not bad in itself, it just doesn’t work in the end.
I thought this month I would focus on exploring the notion of compassion: how do I define it, why bother with it, my own hang ups around it, the techniques for cultivating compassion (what works for me). This seems like a good place to start:
Returning to the earlier post on reactivity and pants. For starters, I believe it is never really about them pantsor whatever becomes a trigger for our reactivity, although in the situation when it actually occurs it can be very hard to see it. We so much want to believe that the root of our discomfort lies outside ourselves that we start believing it and acting on it. For me the question is not whether to pick up the pants or not but rather what I can learn from my reactivity around it: why and how matter more than what. This is not to give myself yet another reason to beat myself up over something but to see what underlying beliefs run the weather of my emotional and mental landscape.
It was one of the tough days that call for a treat. On that particular evening it was the bar of rather expensive dark chocolate with cherry and chilli pepper that had the task of saving my evening. I had a gnawing headache that was so subtle it was hard to notice. When it was my turn to pay at the grocery store, I realised I didn’t have enough money on my bank account and Swiss chocolate had to go. (I have to explain here that I do not owe or use a credit card.) It was not such a big deal: I needed to get home to my PC and transfer some money from the electronic saving account to the one that was connected to my Visa card.
Can we see reality as it is? Beau Lotto’s optical illusions point us in the direction that the brain did not evolve to see the world as it is but the way it was useful to see it in the past and the brain is constantly learning. There is no inherent meaning in information we receive from the world. Our brains create meanings based on the patterns they detect, comparing the new information to something we learned before and this is what matters in the end.
If anything, this can give some of us who are a bit too certain something to become uncertain about.
The brain does all this enormous work and I haven’t even asked for it! It’s like I move forward by relating to the past all the time. How do I learn anything new? Introducing some uncertainty, something that was not part of the past experience. Another question: how can I experience the world differently even when I see what appears to be the same thing or the same person? How do I not get stuck in the old interpretations of the world?
So back to Dosho’s question inspired by the passage from Genjōkoan on firewod and ashes:
When doing one thing, is there anything else?(i.e., is today just today?)
My answer to the question is: No.
When I sit today I just sit. Now is the only reality that exists.
My answer to the question is: Yes.
I sit with me and the results of my actions and choices I made in the past and all my potential for the future. They are all on the same scale of time that is non-linear. Today, yesterday and tomorrow are based on the human concept of time. We break time in manageable units but it is a human concept just like star constellations is not something that exists, it is a bunch of stars that we gathered together under the same name for convenience.
I feel something opening up in my chest and expanding when I think of this. My actions in the past were “necessary” to bring me into this moment and this moment is “necessary” for me to have done those actions in the past so I could “pull myself” to this moment, sort of like an acorn and the oak tree.
Listened to the show with Alissa Kriteman on Just for Women, on which she shared about using the NVC model in daily communication because she now could make sure her meets were met. As an example Alissa gave a not entirely unusual situation in which the partner leaves his pants lying on the floor. She approaches him saying something in the line of , “Honey, would you be willing to put your pants in the laundry basket?”. As I understand, in the NVC model we are to express our feelings, voice a request but also say what need this request would meet and why it is so important to us. In the example above Alissa did not do those steps so in fact the request was formulated in the usual way, not following the NVC model. In the partner’s place I might simply ask her “Why would I want to do that?” and carry on.
Say I were in the same situation and actually used NVC. What kind of need would I expect to be met in this case? Possibly the need for the house to be tidy. For starters, can we really see that as a need? Secondly, what if I before turning to the parner with my obsession about keeping the place tidy, looked at this so called need of mine and asked myself, “Why is it so important for me that the place is tidy?” I’d encourage myself to not accept any fluffy answers but really look into the “why” behind. After all, I am interested in the truth. This is how the inquiry could go (easy to imagine as I used to obsess about things being “in the right places”):
On November 12, thousands of people across the globe will listen together.
A Personal Note From Irisha
Welcome to AR blog! What matters to me in this brief life is the exploration of what it is like to be human, learning to be present in my own life without the constant struggle - "to feel yet not to suffer" as Adrienne Rich wrote - and getting to know how my mind works, who and what I am underneath the layers of conditioning.
Here I reflect on how to be awake in the activities of life itself and on anything that has to do with practice on and off the cushion. I am happy to share the blog space with others who feel they have something to say about their practice.
Reading
Primate's Memoir: Love, Death and Baboons in East Africa by Robert M Sapolsky
Inspiration
I want to unfold. I don't want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am untrue.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Cuddle Party in Sweden with Irisha
I am on my way to be certified as a Cuddle Party Facilitator in Sweden. Want to know more?
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