Practicing this slogan is hardest at family gatherings. So and so said such and such, do you think they really meant that or something else? So and so said blah, do you think they are really like that or am I overreacting? Cousin so and so believes this or that religiously and politically, do you think they’re judging us?
The slogan is simply stated: Don’t ponder others. Does that mean I get to "analyze" others? Does others include family members and their spouses? What if I’m trying to understand them so I can help them once I figure them out? Or to protect myself from being hurt or offended by them?
Not pondering others points directly to our addicting habits and tendencies of finding faults in others. When we are insecure about ourselves, we look for faults in the people around us to bring ourselves up by putting them down. If the other person exhibits positive traits that make us feel insecure, we begin scrutinizing his or her words and lifestyle to bring them down. If we are feeling insecure about ourselves in one area of life, we may muse about the faults of a person in another area of life, comparing ourselves to the scabs and faults we find in them until we feel better. We are okay, or better, because just look at so and so.
Pondering others is also an entertaining escape from boredom. What is juicier to occupy the mind for hours at a time than dissecting the emotional and personal lives of others? We love escalating conflict, especially in private. We get the rush of escalation without even engaging in actual conflict...all the high without the risk!
Pondering others also reveals our attitudes about ourselves and others. Can I reduce the thoughts and feelings and history behind someone’s words and actions to a simple explanatory sentence? Can I compact them into a story? Am I relating openly to the person or defining them by the story I have written as I pondered them? Are the lives and struggles of others merely there to be pondered for my entertainment, distraction or ego-bolstering? Am I so far up here that I can look down there and "get" so and so? Would I react harshly or feel offended to know that so and so was pondering the negative or vulnerable things about me?
Following the slogan "Don’t ponder others" turns the spotlight of attention in the proper direction, into the self. Instead of avoiding our own faults or soothing our insecurities by seeking out and chewing on the faults and weaknesses in others, we turn and look at ourselves.
When we look into ourselves, it is not to beat ourselves up or wallow in self pity. We look at ourselves with compassion. We lean into our deepest insecurities and resentments and weaknesses with a clear and unbiased eye. We can appreciate our strengths and let them go, just as we can press into our rawest wounds and let them go. We can forgive ourselves and let go. By turning the attention around, we develop a deep fascination with our own inner workings rather than indulging fantasies and speculations about the unseen and unknowable workings of others.
Can we help others without pondering them? Of course. As we build understanding and compassion for our own selves, we can share that compassion with others. But we do not have to ponder others in order to see suffering and respond compassionately, mainly because we have already done the work of attention and contemplation within ourselves and connected to their pain through our own. When we see suffering in others, we see it compassionately and let it go instead of dwelling on it for our own enhancement or entertainment.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Boredom On Board
A cruise ship seems like one of the most unlikely places to experience boredom, but also one of the best. There is constant entertainment: reggae bands on the lido deck, hot tubs and water slides, casinos, dozens of restaurants and bars, international and varied menus, in-room movies, exotic excursions, Vegas-style musical reviews, magicians, comedians, dance clubs, 24 hour room service, duty-free shopping, and game shows...just for starters. There is wifi and cellular at sea. There is the perpetual thrum of the engines, the clatter of dishes, and the accents and sounds of 5,000 quests and crew members sharing the same vessel.
And this is where I found boredom. I have x, y, and z, all of these fantastic and stimulating things at my fingertips and at my service, and the heart is bored.
There is hot boredom, which is best described as that restless, antsy, burning-desire to get up and go do something. It may be experienced during a quiet moment when we feel like we’re supposed to be doing something, anything. It may be experienced during meditation as that uneasy vibration within us that makes us want to get up and get out. It is an itch that demands to be scratched. It may be experienced in the midst of activity. It is that hot, nearly irresistible compulsion to go and be stimulated, be entertained, be active, be distracted, be productive.
A cruise is a perfect place to experience this hot boredom. There is little to no personal space (sharing time and room with immediate and extended family), no silence, and hourly announcements audible even in the shower about what activities are underway or upcoming. The first time I sat to meditate in the state room, I felt a tinge of boredom and thought "I’ve paid money to be here, to have all these amenities and entertainments right here, right now for myself and my family, so I better not feel bored." I felt the compulsion for activity and a hollowness and kept asking myself "so what do I want?"
Rather than experiencing the hot boredom, my mind raced: What do I want? What do I want to do? What do I want change? What’s wrong?
So off I went into the ship to shop and eat and do, but as I did the questions changed from What do I want to do? to Why do I want to do? My mind was racing even in the midst of the entertainments and distractions. And somewhere between the penny slots and the coffee and sushi bars it hit...frantic grasping and running from hot boredom.
Hot boredom is a sensation of loss of control. I have nothing to do, nowhere to be, so I have no control. There is nothing, no thing, for me to control to create a sense of solidity and security. There is nothing between me and the experience of the moment, so it feels like I’ve lost my grasp, which throws me into the compulsive and often indiscriminate hunt for any activity or thing to grasp to regain that sense of control.
So I found a seat and stayed with the hot boredom, recognizing it as boredom, and sat. My mind rifled through all the ship’s amenities. I even started thinking about meditation as an entertaining and engaging activity. Slowly the boredom cooled and quieted down and the impulse or compulsion to do do do settled, but the boredom did not vanish. Boredom, like all other mental states, never magically and permanently vanishes. The boredom became what is often called "cool boredom," and as the heat left it, I felt more and more that the boredom was no big deal. Boredom is no big deal, because ultimately there is nowhere to be and nothing to do that creates true solidity, permanence, wholeness, security or bliss, and that is true in everyday life as well as on a cruise ship.
Cooled boredom, I think, goes to the root of the difference between entertainment and pleasure. My wife and I watched "Eat, Pray, Love" several weeks ago and a line about entertainment and pleasure has stuck in our minds ever since: we (as Americans, especially) know entertainment, but we don’t know pleasure.
The difference between entertainment and pleasure seems to be not how we treat a particular object, but how we engage the moment. In cooled boredom the drive to jump to the next activity falls away. Not only does the compulsion to do the next thing fall away, but the thing or activity before me right here and now is not here as the result of compulsion. Food, for example, is often an object of entertainment. A cup of coffee is often marketed in a visually stimulating cup and can be purchased on the way to the next thing to do with the promise of keeping us going to do that next thing. We consume it while doing something else, on our way to do something else, so we can do that something else before we’re on to the next thing we’re already thinking about. In cooled boredom we still have our cup of coffee, but whether we drink that coffee fast or slow, we are drinking the coffee fast or slow with nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, and not as a compulsive activity. When we drink coffee, we just drink coffee.
The difference between entertainment and pleasure is not the lavishness of the object, either. In cooled boredom, whether we are eating a peanut butter sandwich or an expensive meal, we are eating that sandwich or lavish meal because of no compulsion and with no compulsion to get to the next thing. Therein lies pleasure, not as an overindulgence or saturation of the senses by an object or activity, but as full openness of the senses and mind to the moment and momentary experience, with the awareness that pleasure, like all mental states and experiences, is an impermanent thing not to be grasped. The momentary experience is not seen as or expected to be something more or other than it is–it is experienced as impermanent but here, when it is, and how it is, with openness.
Cooled boredom taps us into the space to pleasurably experience the moment as much as it taps us into the openness to stay with painful emotions, fear, and sorrow. Cooled boredom may be experienced in meditation as we just sit because and with no other goal or interest. When sitting, just sit. When a painful emotion arises we don’t bolt off to the next thing to do to make the negative emotion go away. Instead, we sit with the sorrow or anger or rawness. Just sorrow or pain, with no illusion of anything thing or place to grasp to make everything perfect and pain-free. Like pleasure, the momentary painful experience is not seen as or expected to be something more or other than it is–it is experienced as impermanent but here, when it is, and how it is, with openness. Cooled boredom creates space for the moment and for the realization that there is no thing or place out there that completes us and no need to be rushing out of the present to go catch that mythical next ship.
And this is where I found boredom. I have x, y, and z, all of these fantastic and stimulating things at my fingertips and at my service, and the heart is bored.
There is hot boredom, which is best described as that restless, antsy, burning-desire to get up and go do something. It may be experienced during a quiet moment when we feel like we’re supposed to be doing something, anything. It may be experienced during meditation as that uneasy vibration within us that makes us want to get up and get out. It is an itch that demands to be scratched. It may be experienced in the midst of activity. It is that hot, nearly irresistible compulsion to go and be stimulated, be entertained, be active, be distracted, be productive.
A cruise is a perfect place to experience this hot boredom. There is little to no personal space (sharing time and room with immediate and extended family), no silence, and hourly announcements audible even in the shower about what activities are underway or upcoming. The first time I sat to meditate in the state room, I felt a tinge of boredom and thought "I’ve paid money to be here, to have all these amenities and entertainments right here, right now for myself and my family, so I better not feel bored." I felt the compulsion for activity and a hollowness and kept asking myself "so what do I want?"
Rather than experiencing the hot boredom, my mind raced: What do I want? What do I want to do? What do I want change? What’s wrong?
So off I went into the ship to shop and eat and do, but as I did the questions changed from What do I want to do? to Why do I want to do? My mind was racing even in the midst of the entertainments and distractions. And somewhere between the penny slots and the coffee and sushi bars it hit...frantic grasping and running from hot boredom.
Hot boredom is a sensation of loss of control. I have nothing to do, nowhere to be, so I have no control. There is nothing, no thing, for me to control to create a sense of solidity and security. There is nothing between me and the experience of the moment, so it feels like I’ve lost my grasp, which throws me into the compulsive and often indiscriminate hunt for any activity or thing to grasp to regain that sense of control.
So I found a seat and stayed with the hot boredom, recognizing it as boredom, and sat. My mind rifled through all the ship’s amenities. I even started thinking about meditation as an entertaining and engaging activity. Slowly the boredom cooled and quieted down and the impulse or compulsion to do do do settled, but the boredom did not vanish. Boredom, like all other mental states, never magically and permanently vanishes. The boredom became what is often called "cool boredom," and as the heat left it, I felt more and more that the boredom was no big deal. Boredom is no big deal, because ultimately there is nowhere to be and nothing to do that creates true solidity, permanence, wholeness, security or bliss, and that is true in everyday life as well as on a cruise ship.
Cooled boredom, I think, goes to the root of the difference between entertainment and pleasure. My wife and I watched "Eat, Pray, Love" several weeks ago and a line about entertainment and pleasure has stuck in our minds ever since: we (as Americans, especially) know entertainment, but we don’t know pleasure.
The difference between entertainment and pleasure seems to be not how we treat a particular object, but how we engage the moment. In cooled boredom the drive to jump to the next activity falls away. Not only does the compulsion to do the next thing fall away, but the thing or activity before me right here and now is not here as the result of compulsion. Food, for example, is often an object of entertainment. A cup of coffee is often marketed in a visually stimulating cup and can be purchased on the way to the next thing to do with the promise of keeping us going to do that next thing. We consume it while doing something else, on our way to do something else, so we can do that something else before we’re on to the next thing we’re already thinking about. In cooled boredom we still have our cup of coffee, but whether we drink that coffee fast or slow, we are drinking the coffee fast or slow with nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, and not as a compulsive activity. When we drink coffee, we just drink coffee.
The difference between entertainment and pleasure is not the lavishness of the object, either. In cooled boredom, whether we are eating a peanut butter sandwich or an expensive meal, we are eating that sandwich or lavish meal because of no compulsion and with no compulsion to get to the next thing. Therein lies pleasure, not as an overindulgence or saturation of the senses by an object or activity, but as full openness of the senses and mind to the moment and momentary experience, with the awareness that pleasure, like all mental states and experiences, is an impermanent thing not to be grasped. The momentary experience is not seen as or expected to be something more or other than it is–it is experienced as impermanent but here, when it is, and how it is, with openness.
Cooled boredom taps us into the space to pleasurably experience the moment as much as it taps us into the openness to stay with painful emotions, fear, and sorrow. Cooled boredom may be experienced in meditation as we just sit because and with no other goal or interest. When sitting, just sit. When a painful emotion arises we don’t bolt off to the next thing to do to make the negative emotion go away. Instead, we sit with the sorrow or anger or rawness. Just sorrow or pain, with no illusion of anything thing or place to grasp to make everything perfect and pain-free. Like pleasure, the momentary painful experience is not seen as or expected to be something more or other than it is–it is experienced as impermanent but here, when it is, and how it is, with openness. Cooled boredom creates space for the moment and for the realization that there is no thing or place out there that completes us and no need to be rushing out of the present to go catch that mythical next ship.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Changing Relationships
Cultivating a compassionate and fearless heart does not mean all our relationships will magically work out happily ever after. A man may develop compassion and fearlessness and still decide to file for divorce or set firm boundaries with family members and coworkers or still never hear from an estranged child again. Awakening is not a mystical cure-all or a twelve step program that promises to repair every broken relationship. Awakening to the fact that all things end, including all personal relationships, deepens our ability to feel compassion for and connectedness with those who experience and fear such losses, including ourselves. But awakening is not a switch that flips and turns a relationship from dysfunctional to happy in an instant. Sometimes the compassion and fearlessness discovered within the heart directs us to the decision that what is truly best is ending or distancing certain relationships.
A man may develop compassion and find new space to develop a fresh and new relationship with his spouse or partner. A man may feel compassion for himself and his spouse but realize that romance and attraction will not follow because they have become or always were incompatible people. He may see in practice the fact that all things, all relationships, emotions, and individuals end. The awakened heart may see that the marriage or relationship itself is a form of grasping meant to create an illusion of permanence and solidity to stave off our fear of the unknown. As fearlessness develops through staying with the groundless, raw, and challenging elements of our hearts, the unknown becomes less and less threatening. As the unknown becomes less threatening, those relationships and attachments we have built up against the unknown come into clearer and clearer view. As we see more clearly, some relationships will remain and some will pass, but all will change.
The end of a relationship is not a failure, just as the continuance of a relationship is not a success. Notions of success and failure are still the delusions of a heart that insists relationships are permanent or eternal. We can develop a compassionate heart for all people, but nothing requires us to develop a romantic or sexual attraction to all people. We can develop compassion, but nothing requires us to endure abuse or indulge co-dependency based anxieties. We can develop compassion and find that some relationships simply do not and will not function in their past or current forms.
As relationships change, stay with the feelings that arise within you. You may feel anxiety about facing the unknown without a partner, or anxiety about facing the unknown with your partner as the relationship takes new form. You may feel blame surge within you, elevating yourself into the righteous position and pointing at her or him for not being someone or something different. You may feel an empty space where you expected romantic love to be, or you may find new passion as old storylines of anger and blame fade away. As with all other exercises of staying with the raw emotions, get to know the shape of these feelings and follow them down into the darkest places that scare and disturb you. Face them, let them rise and fall as neither good nor bad, and let them be, then act with the increasing compassion and clarity that you find in all of your relationships.
A man may develop compassion and find new space to develop a fresh and new relationship with his spouse or partner. A man may feel compassion for himself and his spouse but realize that romance and attraction will not follow because they have become or always were incompatible people. He may see in practice the fact that all things, all relationships, emotions, and individuals end. The awakened heart may see that the marriage or relationship itself is a form of grasping meant to create an illusion of permanence and solidity to stave off our fear of the unknown. As fearlessness develops through staying with the groundless, raw, and challenging elements of our hearts, the unknown becomes less and less threatening. As the unknown becomes less threatening, those relationships and attachments we have built up against the unknown come into clearer and clearer view. As we see more clearly, some relationships will remain and some will pass, but all will change.
The end of a relationship is not a failure, just as the continuance of a relationship is not a success. Notions of success and failure are still the delusions of a heart that insists relationships are permanent or eternal. We can develop a compassionate heart for all people, but nothing requires us to develop a romantic or sexual attraction to all people. We can develop compassion, but nothing requires us to endure abuse or indulge co-dependency based anxieties. We can develop compassion and find that some relationships simply do not and will not function in their past or current forms.
As relationships change, stay with the feelings that arise within you. You may feel anxiety about facing the unknown without a partner, or anxiety about facing the unknown with your partner as the relationship takes new form. You may feel blame surge within you, elevating yourself into the righteous position and pointing at her or him for not being someone or something different. You may feel an empty space where you expected romantic love to be, or you may find new passion as old storylines of anger and blame fade away. As with all other exercises of staying with the raw emotions, get to know the shape of these feelings and follow them down into the darkest places that scare and disturb you. Face them, let them rise and fall as neither good nor bad, and let them be, then act with the increasing compassion and clarity that you find in all of your relationships.
Healing The Father Wound
Many men do not want to be their fathers, so they work to make their lives different from what they knew growing up. They work to parent differently, disciplining more because their fathers were too lenient, or disciplining less because they were treated harshly. They choose different careers, working long hours because they grew up with the stressors of financial lack, or avoiding work commitments because their fathers were never home. They try to control and command every detail of life because their fathers lacked control and command, or they try to shirk any structure and authority because their fathers were authoritarians.
The thinking is something like this: If I can control certain or all of the aspects of life outside of myself, then I won’t be like him inside of myself.
Once stated, we can see obvious problems with this thinking. How many men try and try to control the aspects of their lives only to find themselves looking at their fathers in the mirror years later? I don’t know how this happened. I tried so hard to do everything differently, and I still ended up becoming the person I feared.
Fear of becoming one’s father is a fear of becoming someone else. This is the surface emotion, and when articulated does not make much rational sense either. I don’t want to become someone else, so I need to control my outside life so I don’t become someone else inside. If I fail to control some aspect of my outer life in just the right way, then I will inwardly become what I am most trying to avoid. This fear and the outward activity generated by this fear are blinds that keep us from digging deeper into the raw heart underneath.
Beneath the fear and distracting activity is anger and hatred and hurt. He ignored me. He hurt me. He left me. I hate him. Not wanting to become him is our way of saying "I hate who you are, and you are is not worth being."
Instead of retreating back to fear and trying to control our outward appearances, we need to stay with this raw, aching core. Why is this important? Staying with the hate and the anger and the hurt allows us to soften our hearts and begin letting go of the hurt that controls our inner and outer lives. For as much as we strive to control our outer lives to avoid becoming our fathers, it is the unaddressed anger and hate within ourselves that controls us through and through. The anger and hatred drives the anxiety and fearful feelings and behaviors, and the anger and hatred will ultimately prevent us from softening our hearts for those things we hate and fear within our own selves and truly becoming compassionate and fearless men.
Staying with the anger and hatred does not mean you validate past abuse, neglect, or harsh treatment. Abuse is wrong, neglect is wrong, and you don’t have to accept these acts as right or okay to heal. Staying with the anger does not mean you have to rekindle a relationship with the abuser or repress the facts of the past. Staying with the anger and hate means staying present with the surge and depth of these emotions. Sit and breathe with the dark, old rawness. Stay present and do not reject the feelings as wrong or bad. See how the impulses of fear and anxiety emerge and divert attention away from the heart and outside of yourself. See how the past emerges with flashes of abuse or hurt that make you want to turn away and keep the anger and hate permanent because it is justified and right to do so. Notice the voice of doubt that says if you heal the hurt, then you will surely fail, because only holding onto this anger and hate will protect you from repeating the past. Essentially, study and know yourself, how you work at your rawest points, and how your emotions and impulses arise and influence your actions.
Notice all of these things. Watch them rise and fall and change and surge and rage and fade. Stay with them for as long as it takes. It may be ten minutes each day for several days or weeks. It may be a block of hours one afternoon. There is no right, normal or expected amount of time. Stay with your deepest and darkest emotions, breathing through them without considering them right or wrong or good or bad. Do not repress them, and do not indulge them with fantasies of change or violence. When daydreams or images arise, acknowledge them as thoughts and let them go. Again and again if necessary. With each breath in, let the intensity of the emotions rise. With each breath out, imagine space around the emotions or imagine light shining into them.
What may happen? You may see that the anger and hatred already contain breaks, that they are not constant and permanent or solid. You may see the raw charge of the emotions fade each time you return to meditation. You may feel compassion for your own hurt heart, compassion for yourself and the self-hurt that comes from clutching onto anger for years and years without relief. You may feel new space in your heart, and you may feel yourself recognizing the feelings of fear and anxiety as the momentary distractions they truly are. You may feel the impulse to control and command aspects of life and let the impulse go, knowing how and why it arises and knowing that it is another feeling that will naturally subside. You may return again and again to the rawness of your heart, but find each time you return that the seas are calmer and they extend farther than you could ever imagine, and you find new drive and curiosity to become the man you are instead of running to avoid becoming someone you never were.
The thinking is something like this: If I can control certain or all of the aspects of life outside of myself, then I won’t be like him inside of myself.
Once stated, we can see obvious problems with this thinking. How many men try and try to control the aspects of their lives only to find themselves looking at their fathers in the mirror years later? I don’t know how this happened. I tried so hard to do everything differently, and I still ended up becoming the person I feared.
Fear of becoming one’s father is a fear of becoming someone else. This is the surface emotion, and when articulated does not make much rational sense either. I don’t want to become someone else, so I need to control my outside life so I don’t become someone else inside. If I fail to control some aspect of my outer life in just the right way, then I will inwardly become what I am most trying to avoid. This fear and the outward activity generated by this fear are blinds that keep us from digging deeper into the raw heart underneath.
Beneath the fear and distracting activity is anger and hatred and hurt. He ignored me. He hurt me. He left me. I hate him. Not wanting to become him is our way of saying "I hate who you are, and you are is not worth being."
Instead of retreating back to fear and trying to control our outward appearances, we need to stay with this raw, aching core. Why is this important? Staying with the hate and the anger and the hurt allows us to soften our hearts and begin letting go of the hurt that controls our inner and outer lives. For as much as we strive to control our outer lives to avoid becoming our fathers, it is the unaddressed anger and hate within ourselves that controls us through and through. The anger and hatred drives the anxiety and fearful feelings and behaviors, and the anger and hatred will ultimately prevent us from softening our hearts for those things we hate and fear within our own selves and truly becoming compassionate and fearless men.
Staying with the anger and hatred does not mean you validate past abuse, neglect, or harsh treatment. Abuse is wrong, neglect is wrong, and you don’t have to accept these acts as right or okay to heal. Staying with the anger does not mean you have to rekindle a relationship with the abuser or repress the facts of the past. Staying with the anger and hate means staying present with the surge and depth of these emotions. Sit and breathe with the dark, old rawness. Stay present and do not reject the feelings as wrong or bad. See how the impulses of fear and anxiety emerge and divert attention away from the heart and outside of yourself. See how the past emerges with flashes of abuse or hurt that make you want to turn away and keep the anger and hate permanent because it is justified and right to do so. Notice the voice of doubt that says if you heal the hurt, then you will surely fail, because only holding onto this anger and hate will protect you from repeating the past. Essentially, study and know yourself, how you work at your rawest points, and how your emotions and impulses arise and influence your actions.
Notice all of these things. Watch them rise and fall and change and surge and rage and fade. Stay with them for as long as it takes. It may be ten minutes each day for several days or weeks. It may be a block of hours one afternoon. There is no right, normal or expected amount of time. Stay with your deepest and darkest emotions, breathing through them without considering them right or wrong or good or bad. Do not repress them, and do not indulge them with fantasies of change or violence. When daydreams or images arise, acknowledge them as thoughts and let them go. Again and again if necessary. With each breath in, let the intensity of the emotions rise. With each breath out, imagine space around the emotions or imagine light shining into them.
What may happen? You may see that the anger and hatred already contain breaks, that they are not constant and permanent or solid. You may see the raw charge of the emotions fade each time you return to meditation. You may feel compassion for your own hurt heart, compassion for yourself and the self-hurt that comes from clutching onto anger for years and years without relief. You may feel new space in your heart, and you may feel yourself recognizing the feelings of fear and anxiety as the momentary distractions they truly are. You may feel the impulse to control and command aspects of life and let the impulse go, knowing how and why it arises and knowing that it is another feeling that will naturally subside. You may return again and again to the rawness of your heart, but find each time you return that the seas are calmer and they extend farther than you could ever imagine, and you find new drive and curiosity to become the man you are instead of running to avoid becoming someone you never were.
Monday, December 13, 2010
The Mindful Man
What does it mean to be a mindful man, to bring mindfulness to the roles played by a man as a father, a husband, a lover, a provider, and a guy?
A realization of the truth that all things end is the heart of a mindful man, and it is the source of both his soft compassion and his fearlessness. Nothing that we know today is permanent and solid. All relationships will end, either by the erosion of time, divorce, distance, or ultimately the end of all lives involved. All careers will end, either by layoffs, field changes, retirement, or sickness. Health and sex will end. All of the roles a man plays will change, evolve, and end. All things end.
Our base impulse is to repel this fact as defeating and bleak, and we want to think that all that is feeling good or pleasant or at least not-as-bad-as-it-could-be right now will always be so. We know that all things end, we know this as a conceptual fact, but we don’t want to feel or experience that for a fact, because to do so exposes us to the utterly raw, groundless, and unpredictable nature of our daily existence. However, staying with and directly experiencing this raw groundlessness is what cultivates the heart of man for compassionate and fearless living. Pressing into this fact of life in particular helps us shed all of our myths and delusions and bring an end to our destructive and distracted thoughts, attitudes, and actions.
Pressing into the rawness of “all things end” is not to be confused with a doom and gloom attitude. It is not apathetic nihilism, which is simply another method of avoiding the rawness. Instead, pressing into the feelings evoked by “all things end” is a very tender and compassionate process that awakens the heart and brings life into sharp focus.
The other night I looked deep into the fact that my marriage will end. There is no such thing as forever after. There is no guarantee that we will live to ripe old age together. This relationship may end at any moment due to accident or illness. It may end in old age. It may end with a parting of hearts or ways. Ultimately, this relationship with this person will end, just as all relationships between all people end.
At this point I felt deep loneliness and fear. I felt an urge of possessiveness that wanted people to be "mine" forever. I felt anxiety over the fragility of this and all relationships, and the anxiety felt hot and close and constricting. The anxiety and fear and loneliness, like blame and anger, were directed outward, making hard distinctions between me and them and treating relationships as tangible, separate things that could be grasped and kept.
Instead of turning away from the feelings, I stayed with them, feeling the contour of the fear, feeling the fear change into loneliness before the anxiety closed in. I noted how thoughts drifted to memories of pleasant moments and then drifted into fantasies about the future. I noted how there were thoughts of predictability, how the car starts every morning, how the same routines of life keep on coming and going, and thoughts of planning for the future, what to look forward to on vacation next week. These thoughts were forceful and vivid, and each time I would label them as thoughts and let them go before returning to the anxiety once again.
Slowly, the anixiety cooled. The claustrophobic feelings of aloneness and fearfulness eased and openned a space. Things end, they all end, it is the natural and normal and only real way of things. I stayed with it and felt the strong emotions slide away a degree at a time. No fear. No anxiety. And then the sense of aloneness gave way to compassion for and connectedness with the same raw fears and anxieties in the hearts of others and connectedness with the same capacity in all to shed these fears and anxieties and awaken.
The heart of man is like this. It delves to the deepest, darkest part of the man, faces all it finds there with focus and fearlessness, and emerges ready to connect with all others with the same compassionate focus and fearlessness. This is the heart from which we can act in marriage, in fatherhood, in the workplace, and in the world. Playtime with my daughter this evening after returning home from work is transformed by this heart. Interactions with clients and coworkers are transformed. Romance and sex are transformed by this heart, as is a man's view of himself, care for himself, and forgiveness for himself. All relationships, though they all end, each and every one of them, find their beginning in this fearless and compassionate heart.
A realization of the truth that all things end is the heart of a mindful man, and it is the source of both his soft compassion and his fearlessness. Nothing that we know today is permanent and solid. All relationships will end, either by the erosion of time, divorce, distance, or ultimately the end of all lives involved. All careers will end, either by layoffs, field changes, retirement, or sickness. Health and sex will end. All of the roles a man plays will change, evolve, and end. All things end.
Our base impulse is to repel this fact as defeating and bleak, and we want to think that all that is feeling good or pleasant or at least not-as-bad-as-it-could-be right now will always be so. We know that all things end, we know this as a conceptual fact, but we don’t want to feel or experience that for a fact, because to do so exposes us to the utterly raw, groundless, and unpredictable nature of our daily existence. However, staying with and directly experiencing this raw groundlessness is what cultivates the heart of man for compassionate and fearless living. Pressing into this fact of life in particular helps us shed all of our myths and delusions and bring an end to our destructive and distracted thoughts, attitudes, and actions.
Pressing into the rawness of “all things end” is not to be confused with a doom and gloom attitude. It is not apathetic nihilism, which is simply another method of avoiding the rawness. Instead, pressing into the feelings evoked by “all things end” is a very tender and compassionate process that awakens the heart and brings life into sharp focus.
The other night I looked deep into the fact that my marriage will end. There is no such thing as forever after. There is no guarantee that we will live to ripe old age together. This relationship may end at any moment due to accident or illness. It may end in old age. It may end with a parting of hearts or ways. Ultimately, this relationship with this person will end, just as all relationships between all people end.
At this point I felt deep loneliness and fear. I felt an urge of possessiveness that wanted people to be "mine" forever. I felt anxiety over the fragility of this and all relationships, and the anxiety felt hot and close and constricting. The anxiety and fear and loneliness, like blame and anger, were directed outward, making hard distinctions between me and them and treating relationships as tangible, separate things that could be grasped and kept.
Instead of turning away from the feelings, I stayed with them, feeling the contour of the fear, feeling the fear change into loneliness before the anxiety closed in. I noted how thoughts drifted to memories of pleasant moments and then drifted into fantasies about the future. I noted how there were thoughts of predictability, how the car starts every morning, how the same routines of life keep on coming and going, and thoughts of planning for the future, what to look forward to on vacation next week. These thoughts were forceful and vivid, and each time I would label them as thoughts and let them go before returning to the anxiety once again.
Slowly, the anixiety cooled. The claustrophobic feelings of aloneness and fearfulness eased and openned a space. Things end, they all end, it is the natural and normal and only real way of things. I stayed with it and felt the strong emotions slide away a degree at a time. No fear. No anxiety. And then the sense of aloneness gave way to compassion for and connectedness with the same raw fears and anxieties in the hearts of others and connectedness with the same capacity in all to shed these fears and anxieties and awaken.
The heart of man is like this. It delves to the deepest, darkest part of the man, faces all it finds there with focus and fearlessness, and emerges ready to connect with all others with the same compassionate focus and fearlessness. This is the heart from which we can act in marriage, in fatherhood, in the workplace, and in the world. Playtime with my daughter this evening after returning home from work is transformed by this heart. Interactions with clients and coworkers are transformed. Romance and sex are transformed by this heart, as is a man's view of himself, care for himself, and forgiveness for himself. All relationships, though they all end, each and every one of them, find their beginning in this fearless and compassionate heart.
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