Ninja buddha farmer
Oh how we suffer
The idea that we create our own suffering is not new, yet we haven’t figured out how not to do it. Suffering becomes a self fulfilling prophecy very quickly. It isn’t because we are all martyr’s and masochists, it is because becoming aware of our thinking, noticing the ways in which we create our own suffering is damn hard. Harder still is cultivating the honesty with ourselves to admit it, to be as honest as we can with ourselves. And then if it is going to shift or change we have to act on it, which means constant awareness and deliberate thought and action. After all, this thinking of ours has become a lifelong habit, it doesn’t just go away because we know it’s there.
I, probably like you, have discovered a number of ways in which I have created my own suffering, none more painful or difficult to face than how I was contributing to the unhappiness in my marriage.
Just over a year ago, as alluded to in my post on Roman Ruins, I almost gave up on my marriage of 7 years. I had hit a point where my unhappiness was unbearable, and my habit was to look outside myself as to what the problem was. So I blamed and blamed and I collected my evidence that I was right. That our lives had moved in fast forward for the past 9 years, moving 5 times coast to coast and overseas and back again – that when we were finally in one place and things had slowed the unhappiness couldn’t be pegged on the change or impending change – the unhappiness was right here. Or in my case, over there, it was my wife’s fault. I my mind I had a list of things I needed her to do/change about herself before I would be willing to go to couples therapy. The problem with collecting evidence to support your own argument is that you resist the truth, even when it smacks you in the face. As we are on our path of collecting we aren’t going to pick up those ideas or examples that don’t serve us. So I found myself deep in the well of self deception, drowning in my own blame.
Resentment builds and resistance increases and with each attempt on my wife’s part to talk it through, to go to therapy, to look it in the eye and see it for what it was, I ground myself in deeper. And it continued in that direction for months until one day it didn’t. Her persistence endured and I begrudgingly agreed to one couples therapy session.
Showing up to that session I was certain that I would not budge from my position that was my was at fault, she wasn’t going to change, and maybe wasn’t capable of change. And then we got arrived, to a small office building in a town just north of Amsterdam. I sat down, crossed my arms and shut down. And then our very skilled therapist started asking questions – and my very well defended wall was by an objective third party. As I left the session I had to decide just how much I wanted to continue to build resentment and to resist my life. I had to take a serious look at how I was creating my own suffering. And stop looking outside myself.
The tibetan word Sem mean discursive thinking, it is the way in which we get in our own ways. Rigpa on the other hand mean wisdom mind, it is a way of cutting through things and seeing them as they are. For 14 years I had created this story and self image of me the mindful buddhist, and meanwhile I was just as self deceptive as the next person.
Pema Chodron says that being concerned with our self image is like being deaf and blind. It is like walking through a field a beautiful flowers with a black hood over our head. I decided to take my hood off. I hope you do too.
Seeking
It is only through enduring and going through, not around, the inevitable pain and suffering we encounter that we truly get to know ourselves. Through pain we can cultivate compassion for ourselves and others. Find your bodhisattva and spread compassion for we are all damaged and flawed, it is our human condition.
Pursuit of Happiness
I was just perusing facebook when I can across a friend’s post, “Life can be amazing and miraculous one minute and horrible the next, here’ to waiting for the next amazing moment”. And it got me to thinking – We hear a lot about the pursuit of happiness and our right to it. What we fail to see is that it is precisely our pursuit of happiness that causes our suffering – and thus keeps us from that “happiness” we are looking for. I have spent much of my life in that same pursuit – barely tolerating the less than pleasurable experiences in desperate search of the next happy moment. When that moment comes I cling, and maybe you do too, not wanting the feeling or experience to change or dissipate.
I remember the day I gave birth to my son Henry. It was the mist intense experience I had ever had – anticipation, joy, pain, absence of pain and pure joy. I felt each emotion as if I imagine it would feel like if I were born blind and one day was able to see. The visceral feeling of each moment of that day will never leave me. And while I was very focused on the moment and appreciating each second (with the exception of the excruciating pain of the last stages of labor of course) I was terrified for the experience to pass. I instantly started worrying that my 12 weeks of maternity leave would not be enough – and I mean immediately, as in hours after giving birth I was crying and anxious. So I clung to each day as if it were my last – and I cried each day anticipating the day that I would have to leave my perfect little boy at home while I went to work. That extreme clinging to the moment and anticipation of the future took away from my ability to just enjoy and cherish where I was.
And then one day, a month into my maternity leave as I was rediscovering my meditation practice and study I read a paragraph from Mark Epstein’s “Thoughts Without a Thinker” that jolted me into a brief glimpse of awareness. Awareness that I was causing my own suffering. It was around the idea that the pursuit of pleasure leads to dissatisfaction as pleasure itself is not sustainable, primarily because we become content with what felt “pleasurable” initially, so we seek more.
“When any situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged it only produces a feeling of mild contentment. We are made so that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things. Thus our possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution” – Epstein
It was an awareness that the contrast of my pain from labor allowed me to appreciate the absence of pain once he was delivered. And that if I continue to seek that moment, even if I have the moment again, it won’t be the same, it is not sustainable in a constant way. By yearning for my environment to not change I was not appreciating what I had in the now. So I slowly let go of clinging to the idea that this utopia we had created in Henry’s first few months would change, and pursuit of a constant state of anything only leads to discontent. We are not wired for contentment.
So if you are like me in any way, and are clinging to a moment, a feeling, a touch, anything – let it go and know that the next painful, frustrating, or even mildly annoying experience you have will only help you enjoy the next “good” moment that much more.
Nameless
The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name”
– Lao Tzu
Roman Ruins
I fell in love with the burden of my pain and rather than wallowing in my self pity I used it as a pulpit to preach and defend upon. In the end, I was not better off than having wallowed in self pity because I hadn’t leaned in and looked it in the eye. I told the story as a detached third person and masked it in self acceptance but it was fear and martyrdom.
I can hear the defenses before the alarm has been sounded – no one could call my shit because I had a story for everything – I better defended than the Roman Empire.
And the reward was great, my sad story guilted people into submission – I was left alone and revered for making it- for not becoming just like them. No drugs, no alcohol addiction, graduated high school and college, successful and in a big job, married with a child in a beautiful home.
And it worked until one day it didn’t. As I told the story and deceived myself into believing I had done the work – after all I meditated and had a therapist – my world began to breakdown – slowly at first. Like a small crack in a pipe, water slowly leaking, and suddenly it is hit, ever so slightly in a way it has been hit and cracked before, but this time in just the right way that it fully bursts. And I moved directly to blame and escape. I blamed my wife for all the things she wasn’t doing and took the high road – I latched onto someone who found me smart and interesting who liked the stories I spun and thought I was funny and wise – and I escaped to the false comfort of a fleeting intellectual crush. I was a distraction from the sad story – and she was a piece of the “make me feel special plan”. Along the way I crushed my wife and almost ruined my family – the solid city – the Roman Empire of the story I had created had crumbled.
How honest could I be with myself, could I look the raw truth in the eye and resurrect my life?
Jellyfish by Yiming Chen
immortality – constant reinvention and metamorphisis
Looking outside of myself
I turned 35 yesterday. Funny how some ages hit you and others don’t. 35 hit me. I have always been an overachiever, trying to prove to everyone that I am different than my parents, that I won’t be a victim and that I can succeed regardless of my circumstances. In most things I never had innate talent, just a will to be better than people thought I could be. I measured myself on whether I was working harder than everyone else, because I assumed that was the only way to set myself apart. For many years I was right. I ended up playing Division 3 basketball, but not because I was talented, because I worked my ass off. Unfortunately, once you hit college trying harder can only get you so far – talent in addition to effort will surpass you (and size). So I was 6th or 7th off the bench when I was used to being the star of the team. This was my first lesson what worked for me in the past may not work for me now. Life changes, perspective changes and what you put in will not always get you the same results.
I am having a similar experience in my life now, turning 35. I have always been the young one in my peer group at work, always. It felt good, to exceed people’s expectations, to surprise them. My gift has been my intuition for people, how to connect with them, how to motivate them, how to help them uncover their best self, and my insights. I live for the moment that I would be sitting in a room full of executives in some seemingly important meeting. I would revel in the moment that I would wow someone with an observation or insight. I especially loved the moment when someone was there that didn’t know me, and would make small talk after and ask me my age and the look on their face would make my whole day. I felt special. Wow, they would say, you are wise for your age, or you are an old soul, or, where did you learn how to do that at your age. The point is, I felt like an overachiever, I felt different. I stood out.
Now, I am 35, and for some time now the things I have accomplished are no longer special. The job(s) or roles I have held are now what could/should be expected at 35. So yesterday, more than any other time, it really hit me, I look to others to validate my success, my worth, my being. Does being the age that others are make me any less. No.
So it got me to thinking. In what ways am I looking outside myself for validation? So I did a sort of meditation on my life. And thought through everyday experiences (big and small) such as my bike ride to work and whether or not I looked like a tourist or a local (I live in Amsterdam) compared to the person next to me, or to being at the park with my son and comparing myself to the other parents or comparing him to other kids, and to having friends over for dinner, what would they think of the wine, the food, was my cooking better or worse than theirs, was I serving better or worse wine, and when I am at work, do I find value in my work if others don’t praise it, or what if they are the same age or younger than me and doing a similar level job, do I feel less special or like I am less valuable?
You get the idea. Once I catalogued all these situations in my mind, I stripped the outside people the “others” away. I started to imagine each scenario without someone else to compare to or someone else to praise or criticize me. And I found that in most of my life I am looking outside as opposed to inside. The funny realization for me is that I felt like i have been doing this work for years, uncovering neurosis, building self awareness, following my intuition, having a strong sense of self etc…and have been coaching others to do it themselves. I laughed. Sometimes you can convince yourself you are living the work you do, but really you aren’t. Awareness is everything, almost.
Clearly the journey is never ending, what we think we know we can know again, in a different way. The uncovering of self and who we are with others never ends. So my new practice these days is to visualize a situation in which no one else had an opinion or judgement, and it was just me. What would I do then? What would I think of myself if there was no one to compare myself to. Who am I, really? I pick one a day and journal about it or just meditate on it, or sit with my coffee and think alone.
I encourage you to try the same. In what ways are you defining yourself compared to others? Who are you when there is no one?
Now, I realize that this is the other extreme, it is just an exercise, to create more awareness, to create more space for other possibilities.
“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.” Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart
An unexamined life
I just finished a lengthy discussion with an old friend of mine about life and labels and sexuality. The last time we saw each other we were talking about what it may have been like if she ended up with two daughters and a wife instead of two daughters and a husband. She has been in the middle of the sexuality spectrum since I have known her, and it was a toss up as to if she would end up with a man or woman. Her husband is significantly older than her and it is likely that someday she will end up back in the dating pool, and may end up with a woman. It would be such a pity if people jump to the conclusion that her marriage was a sham, or that she has been dishonest with herself or them all those years.
Because if there is one thing I think humans love to do it is label people, and put them in a box. It is safe, predictable, comfortable, that is if they stay in that box. By like me and you, most of us don’t. Sometimes even the box we agree to be in is defined differently by you than it is me.
For example, I came out as a lesbian just as I was finishing my freshman year of college, I was about to turn 19. Unlike many people I know, I came out before I ever had a girlfriend. That isn’t to say I didn’t have a crush. At the time I was dating men, and I had a lot of first and second dates, but rarely more. I had met a guy, let’s call him Dan. He was great, a school nurse, smart, funny, handsome. I went out with him a dozen times. But something was missing. Parallel to dating Dan I was fantasizing about my best female friend, we will call her Sarah. For all intents and purposes we were having an emotional affair, but nothing physical. So, like many times before, I just told myself it was a fleeting crush, a phase and that it happened to everyone. One night Sarah and I had plans to hang out just the two of us. I was really looking forward to it. It had been a long week of school and work and I only wanted to hang out with her. Go to a bar, drink a few beers, talk and laugh all night. Just as we were getting ready to leave her phone rang. It was Joe, the dud of a guy she had a crush on that had been stringing her along. Suddenly he wanted to go out. “Do you mind?” Sarah says…”He hasn’t called in weeks and I really want to see him.” I knew that they would get drunk and have sex. Gag. So I slumped off and pouted and decided to call Dan. He had just gotten back from the city teaching sailing lessons and yes, he would love to go out. He picked me up and we went to Fridays, I guess that was a big deal when I was 18. I shudder at the thought now. I decided that I was going to do the same. Get drunk and have sex, after all, maybe I would feel better and Dan was a great guy, nurse, sailing instructor, he had a JEEP! We drank the night away (he was 21 to my 18 and the server didn’t seem to think I needed to be carded) and ended up at his house. Halfway through the “adventure” I started crying, got up, got dressed and went home. Immediately upon arriving my friend Sue was sitting in the kitchen. “what’s up K” she asks. “I am gay.” As you can imagine that led to a few hours of talking and more crying and a few more beers.
At that moment I had never been more sure of anything in my life. I was gay, that was it. I am now a few days shy of 35 years old, married over to a wonderful woman (together 9 years last week) and we have a two year old son.
So what does this have to do with examining your life and labels and such. Well, it wasn’t always so cut and dry. I have struggled as a gay person, as many do. It is damn hard sometimes. Other times I forget, because I am really just a married person with a beautiful family. So I moved from one label, straight, to another, gay. And people have a whole different set of expectations of you depending on which you are. Everyone in my life expected I would have children from a very young age, I always adored them and am a natural caretaker. The minute I came out almost every person’s response was “but I thought you wanted kids?” Hello, I didn’t give up my uterus! I am the same person, same values, same everything, except now I want to date women.
My wife is more feminine than I am. So of course once everyone got over the fact that we still both had our uterus’ they assumed she would give birth. When in fact she wasn’t sure about being pregnant and I knew it I wanted to with every cell in my body.
You get my point. As humans we label people and we expect them to behave according to that label. And when they don’t we may question their authenticity, their honesty. When in fact we may have no idea who they are or what they set out to think, feel, or do.
As long as you are self aware, and examining your own life and living as authentically as you can, screw what others expect. It is your life.
As a practice I try to end my thoughts about other people with “maybe”. Maybe there are this, or maybe there are that…or maybe not. Nothing is certain.
As Socrates said, “an unexamined life is not worth living.”
Trigger – no not that kind
It happens to all of us, you may not even know it is occurring when it does. Your heart rate increases, your face may flush, maybe your palms get sweaty, if you have a nervous twitch it may show itself, and likely you get defensive, that is if you are like me. It is that moment when someone says something that irritates you, sets off an alarm, or otherwise triggers a reaction in you that likely stems from some set of experiences from growing up.
If there was ever a trigger in my life it is my mother. She has been visiting my wife, son and I for the last two weeks. What that means for me is I have been in my version of hell for two weeks. Culminating in last night’s conversation that started with:
“I feel like you constantly have a wall up with me. I thought we were going to be close again” quickly followed by, “what did you think of your childhood”. Now, of course she waited to have this conversation until my wife was safely out of the country (home for her brothers graduation) and of course not until she had a good two or three glasses of wine topped off by a few tokes of hash. I think I should provide some context here.
We all have a story, mine may or may not be like yours, to some degree. I grew up the oldest of three, (sister than brother) in a small house in a wealthy suburb in Illinois. We, however, were poor. My dad was a train conductor (ticket taker) and my mom stayed home. Not because we could afford for her not to, but because my dad did not allow her to work. My dad looked like a guy who worked on the railroad. A little over 6 feet tall, balding black hair, mustache, about 50 pounds overweight, all in the belly with a loud voice you could hear booming even down the street. The funny thing about his job is that he would take the commuters in and back on the morning ride, and then hung out at the station until rush hour that evening. During that time he drank beer, smoked and played poker with his buddies. For 5 hours! And somehow was paid to do this. What that meant for me is he always came home drunk, before the night even began. My mom had her own addiction issues, pills, coke (though not ever day), a smoker and light drinker, at least at the time.
We lived in a tiny bungalow on Brandon Avenue. I shared a bedroom with both my brother and my sister. There was puke dried on the carpeting in the hallway to our upstairs bedroom from the previous owners dog, I think it was permanent. Most of my friends came over one time to play and then weren’t allowed over again due to the daily screaming matches in my house and the never-ending flow of drugs, booze and cigarettes.
And that is just the beginning, really just a light-hearted set up to what was to follow. So you can imagine the trigger reaction I had when my mom challenged me as to why we weren’t close, and what I thought of my childhood. I mean, I have been in therapy for 12 years and have had my own executive coach for five, I coach people for a living to further help me get away from the childhood that I never stopped running from. So much so that I am 34 on the very cusp of 35, a Global Manager of Organization Development for a multi-billion dollar global company, have moved 4 times in 9 years, all for promotions and each time happier that I wasn’t living near my mother. In case I haven’t mentioned it, my dad has been missing for 18 years, so I didn’t have to work to get away from him.
She really didn’t know what that question was going to get her. And I am certain now she wishes she never asked.
One of the quotes that I use to remind myself that life is just life, and with it comes both suffering and joy is below:
“Pain is not punishment, and pleasure is not reward.” Pema Chodron
I don’t think my mom found it helpful when I ended our conversation with that. But it helps me realize life isn’t out to get me, or reward me. It just is.
justlikeyoume 