Clear Vision Trust

UNFIXING OURSELVES

When I begin a meditation course I ask participants why they want to learn to meditate. The most common reply is that they need to calm down; they live stressful lives and hope that meditation will help them to unwind. Others have an interest in what could be termed spiritual development, but these are a small minority. It might be that people in this secular age are uncomfortable admitting to a spiritual aspiration. Even so, it seems that, on the whole, people look towards meditation mainly as a technique to help them deal with the stresses of modern life. It is interesting that meditation has this reputation, and that the supposed benefits of stress reduction have been responsible for its growing popularity. Meditation is traditionally a spiritual practice, and whatever health benefits it might confer have been seen, if at all, as secondary.

It is also probably true that only in more recent times have the physical and spiritual health of the individual been regarded as separate. Where, in the past, we might have sought reason for our disease in the territory of the soul, we now tend towards scientific explanations. Despite this, conditions like stress are not treatable with antibiotics, and meditation has become one of the officially sanctioned means with which to address such annoying complaints. I am rather uneasy about seeing meditation as a stress reduction technique, partly because this encourages an idea of meditation that strips it of its real value, and partly because I am not sure that it is effective in stress reduction. But my main misgiving about offering meditation as a panacea for the ills of modern life is that, in so doing, meditation is being used to address the symptoms rather than the causes of the disease. Furthermore, by mitigating the symptoms we miss out on learning some lessons about the way we live our lives.

A Productive Life?

Stress seems to be a major contributory factor to a wide variety of health problems, and has many causes. Lifestyles that produce stress in one person seem to be the conditions under which other people thrive. The manner in which most of us live leaves little room for the considerable differences in human temperaments. We are all expected to embrace the notion of an economically productive life as the rationale for life itself. Education is increasingly vocational, stressing the development of skills that will allow us to become a success in the world of work. It is presumed that by so doing the student gains access to the 'good life'. This stress on the development of economically productive skills seems to be reaching further and further back into childhood. Education as a 'leading out' of the child, the development of the imagination and ethical sensibility, have become secondary, if they are addressed at all. Only the old, who have 'earned' their leisure, seem exempt from the pressure to be productive. Even motherhood is no longer valued above work. In the United States, single mothers are now required to work in order to qualify for welfare. In a culture where family values are lauded, the idea that a woman should be 'productive' is given precedence over child-rearing, while the state offers scant provisions for childcare. The rationale of forcing mothers to work or starve seems to be that the negative effects on the child of having a welfare mum are dire. It is as if the new cause of all neuroses, replacing Freud's parental bedroom, is the actual presence of the 'unemployed' mother.

I have been shocked at the importance given to work in the United States, while the rest of life is seen as secondary. The media portrays the developed personality as one which works hard and plays hard. After twelve hours at our dot.com job we go to the gym, work out, then go to a sophisticated restaurant with our beautiful (read successful) counterpart. At weekends, according to this image, we 'gear up', jump in the four by four, and go for a hike. Somewhere we fit in participation in an 'extreme' sport. The stressful lifestyle is the successful lifestyle. In reality, 50% of Americans are obese, according to government health sources, while the quantity of television watched is mind boggling, as is its quality. For many, the demands of work leave them capable of little more than collapsing in front of the anaesthetizing television.

This importance of work transcends the idea of making a reasonable living. It has become the very rationale for life. For those who genuinely love their work, and are employed in something beneficial to society, this may not be a problem, but for many work is unpleasant, with little intrinsic value. Sadly, the result of all this work is the degradation of the planet and the creation of an increasingly superficial and mindless culture. The grim 'joke' above the gates of Auschwitz, 'Work will set you free', has become the mantra of America. The multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry tirelessly researches and markets drugs to help us 'work hard and play hard', drugs that numb the pain of both the body and mind.

The persona that must be worn is one of efficiency, hard work, stability, and glowing health. The necessity of melancholy - the nights of the soul - for the creative imagination finds no place. The persona of America glows with rude health, while the real thing pigs out, watches television (mostly advertising in America) and reaches for a painkiller. The image of the individual seems to be increasingly divorced from the psychic reality of actual people. Complex and multifaceted individuals give way to consumers who, cut off from their creative minds, turn to products through which to define themselves. The light and shade of human experience is replaced by virtual experience. Many of our emotions with any real depth are regarded as symptoms needing treatment, and rapture has been replaced by excitement, bliss by strident happiness. Society glorifies production and consumption.

The health of the individual cannot be separated from that of the society in which he or she lives. This is something recognized by most traditional cultures including Renaissance Europe, as testified to by the words of the sixteenth-century physician, Paracelsus:

"If the physician understands things exactly and sees and recognizes all illnesses in the macrocosm outside man, and if he has a clear idea of man and his whole nature, then and only then is he a physician." ('The Foundations of Medicine', Paracelsus)

Although there is a growing awareness in society at large of the effects of environment on health and well-being, there seems to be little consideration of the effects of the Zeitgeist on the individual. When the spirit of the age is predatory and exploitive, when people's worth is gauged by their productivity, the human spirit is impoverished and weakened.

Meditation should be like the good physician, but what is understood as meditation is often not meditation at all, from a Buddhist perspective. The concern of Buddhist meditation is to understand the complexity of human life, not to reduce that life to symptoms to be eradicated. What passes as meditation is often simply a relaxation technique. Though this might be useful, it does not attempt to address the whole person. The individual cannot be divorced from the society in which he or she lives or indeed from the macrocosm of all life. In the final analysis, Buddhist meditation is concerned with bringing the individual into a harmonic relationship with reality rather than with the adaptation of the social persona. The purpose of meditation is for the meditator to see the true nature of reality and to live at ease with that reality, the underlying assumption being that true human nature is not different or separate from the rest of reality. If we experience this, we come into a sense of well-being and connectedness that is free of the fear that drives so much human activity. This is not some esoteric, metaphysical doctrine but a pragmatic openness to how things really are. Through meditation we can have an actual experience of the correspondence between ourselves and the rest of life. The reason we so often feel cut off from one another is that we experience the world from a basis of fear and selfishness. Meditation can help us move beyond this egocentric view of the world to one in which we have a sense of place and purpose.

Facing Up to Suffering

Stress implies that we are living under tension, being bent out of shape. We are living in a manner that is distorting us. It is this basic distortion of the human being that Buddhism addresses, not the symptoms it produces. I am not suggesting some Rousseauist idealism that views man as noble but corrupted by an ignoble society. Man has created the society in which he lives and the characteristics of human culture are also inherent in the individual, but just because they are inherent does not mean they are inevitable. Human history testifies not only to the crippling effects of social conditioning, but also to the possibility of overcoming or rising above our given lot. What Buddhism is interested in is our potential to transcend our limitations, traditionally named as the three dominant forces of greed, hatred, and delusion - the third being based in a blinkered understanding of reality. The reduction of stress is only tangential to the realization of this potential.

Buddhism begins with the fact of dukkha, which is usually translated 'suffering'. It begins at this point because suffering, in its many varieties, is a universal human experience. No life is free from suffering - stress being a common form. According to Buddhism, when we suffer a possibility opens up, a crack appears in the habitual pattern of our lives. As with all opportunities, we then have a choice - we either enter our experience or do what we can to avoid it.

Meditation is a means by which we can enter more fully into our experience and, by doing so, deepen our understanding of it, and eventually move through it. When meditation is used just as a relaxation, to reduce suffering by avoiding it, it becomes a kind of spiritual aspirin taken to relieve the symptoms, rather than facing up to the deep-rooted patterns that lead to stress and unhappiness.

The positive side of using meditation as a means of combating stress is that our initial limited aims can lead us somewhere unexpected. We start off just wanting to get our shoulders down from around our ears and end up discovering that we are on a spiritual journey. People are sometimes so stressed that they need to reduce the stress to a manageable level before they can consider any journey at all. The danger of using meditation in this way is that we never see beyond the limited benefits of relaxation and use it as a means of sustaining a life that is in desperate need of change. We need to realize that it is not that there is something wrong with our life. This is often the fantasy that we have: that the suffering we experience is somehow unique to us, that the rest of the world is having a jolly good time and it is we who are alone, stressed and at our wit's end. The nature of suffering is that it inclines us towards this kind of near-sighted view of the world. We know that others also suffer - but our emotional reality is one of isolation and negative self-absorption.

One of the most moving stories in the life of the Buddha relates how he helped a woman who had lost her young child.

A young woman, distraught and frantic, is unable to relinquish her dead child. She goes desperately from one person to the next, clasping the corpse to her breast, begging them to heal her baby. One of the people she approaches suggests she goes to see the Buddha, who is staying in the vihara nearby. So the woman hastens to find the Buddha and implores him to cure her child. The Buddha replies that he can indeed help the woman, but that in order to do so he requires a mustard seed, commonly found in all Indian homes. But the Buddha makes one stipulation: the seed must be come from a house where no one has died.

The woman goes off to find the seed, still clutching her dead child. She goes from house to house. Everyone is willing to part with a mustard seed, but no house has been free from the sorrow of death. Again and again, at house after house, she asks. How long the woman searches for the untainted seed we do not know, but at some point her grief takes on a different form. It is transformed into a grief shot through with universal compassion.

In the end she returns to the Buddha, and at last laying down the corpse of her child, asks the Buddha to become her teacher.

The story shows us the creative power of suffering, from which can arise a greater feeling for life, a sense of compassion that allows us to carry on with a new sensitivity and insight into the human condition. It must be made clear that Buddhism does not court or encourage suffering. On the contrary, Buddhism promotes joy and contentment. But it also recognizes that suffering is unavoidable, deep in the grain of our lives. What is avoidable is the desperate clinging to a fantasy view of what life should be like. Understanding and compassion are capable of transforming our experience from a desperate, frantic state of denial to a state of creative endeavour.

A friend of mine recently lost a child at birth. It was a particularly tragic loss because the pregnancy had followed a previous one that had been extremely difficult, with twins born at the start of the third trimester and at great risk. The twins survived. It had been a great joy for her to have a normal pregnancy after nearly losing both her own life and that of her twins. Sometime after the stillbirth, we held a small memorial service at her home, along with the doctor and midwife and a few friends. People spoke, read poems, and said prayers. Finally, the bereaved mother read something she had written about the death of her child. As she read, sitting with my eyes closed I felt a great release of energy sweep through my body that I can only call bliss. For a while I was quite disconcerted by this, as it seemed an inappropriate response, but I now realize that what I experienced was an opening up to the suffering of the parents, and the experience allowed me to respond more deeply to the grief they felt. It was, I think, a response of compassion, of which I had become more capable because of my willingness to experience my own suffering and impermanence. Although I have not been able to maintain that level of openness, it serves as a reminder of why I practise and why I try to cultivate loving-kindness through the Metta Bhavana meditation. It reminds me that a creative response is possible even when confronted with despair and sadness.

Real Compassion

It is important to recognize that we cannot fix all the pain and suffering in our own lives, let alone the lives of others. We can't make everything better. But there is an alternative to both avoidance and despondency. We can value and deepen our own experience and arrive at a place of real compassion towards ourselves and others. Within compassion there is the possibility of creative action. This requires a type of positive realism. Death, illness, problems in relationships, and all the other frustrations of our lives, are not just going to dissolve in bliss because we meditate. This is the Buddhist version of the American dream. Life is not like that and we know it, yet we still buy in. The truth is that a meaningful, creative life is something for which we must work, something that arises from real effort directed towards noble ends. Such a life is open to all who choose it. We do not have to be particularly clever or talented or good-looking, but we do need to make a consistent effort and be prepared to look honestly at ourselves and the world we are creating. We need to address the needs of our soul, to find a way to access what is deepest in us. We need to follow, not so much our dreams, but our reality. Such a life may be simple with no external great achievements. We will probably never win the Nobel Peace Prize, but we can develop kindness and awareness. That is within reach of us all and is a life well lived.

The highest Buddhist ideal is symbolized in the archetypal figures known as Bodhisattvas, beings who have vowed to work tirelessly, through countless lives, for the good of all. Two such figures are the Bodhisattvas known as Avalokita and Tara, who both represent perfect compassion. This is one of the many legends associated with the birth of Tara:

After taking a vow to end the suffering of all beings, Avalokita worked tirelessly for an unimaginably long time. One day he looked down on the world and saw people suffering in all conceivable ways - through warfare, famine, disease, and bereavement. He was overwhelmed. Despite all his efforts nothing seemed to have changed. Suffering still seemed to be at every door. He began to weep. His tears flowed in a great river. They were so plentiful that a puddle began to form, then a pool, and eventually a vast lake of crystal clear brilliance. Then there arose from the centre of the lake a wondrous lotus, and seated on the lotus was a radiant young woman, green in colour. His tears had brought into being Green Tara, the Bodhisattva of active compassion, serene and playful, full of joy and limitless energy.

The spiritual life begins in the facing of suffering, not just the abstract suffering of others but the pain of our own lives. As long as we cling to the fiction of a meaningful life through consumption we numb ourselves to the dukkha of our lives. It is ironic that the principal spiritual practice of Buddhism has been co-opted by many into the arsenal of techniques and drugs supposed to make life bearable, but that in the long term they undermine the awareness needed to make changes in the way we live. Meditation is not a way of avoiding this suffering, but a means of cultivating a compassionate and aware response to it.

reflection: Constant Change

Start with the first stage of the Metta Bhavana meditation, that is, cultivating a sense of wishing yourself well. Then reflect that this sense of kindness is not directed towards an idealized you, but you as you actually are.

Bear in mind that in future you are bound to encounter suffering, your own and others', and that there will be disappointments and hardships. Be aware that there is much in your own life that you cannot control, no way that you can insure yourself against the universal truths of old age, sickness, and death. Try to have a sense that these are natural aspects of life - your life, human life, all life.

Be aware that you cannot change reality in regard to the impermanent nature of things and that for kindness to be meaningful it must exist in relation to this reality, not in opposition to it. Don't try to force this reflection but see if there is a way you can open to this impermanence with a sense of kindness and well-wishing towards all life. Try to cultivate a sense that the vitality and beauty of life is dependent on the fact of constant change, as is the suffering. If there is a sense of sadness see if you can sit calmly with it rather than pull away.

Feel the breath in your body and feel that your body is in a constant state of dynamic interaction with the ever-changing world. Try to sit with the breath and the feeling that reflecting in this way evokes a sense of kind understanding, one that is broad enough to engage with the way things really are and not just trying to make everything all right. Encourage a sense that while life is sad and painful some of the time, life itself could not exist without pain. Use the breath to feel a sense of the fluid nature of your existence, being aware that without this constant taking in and letting out of the breath there would be no life.

As you breathe out try to have a sense of letting go of everything fixed and rigid. Let go into the constantly changing world. Sit for a while with your breath, feeling it bring life into your body as you breathe in and having a sense of letting go into life as you breathe out. Allow your breath to encourage a sense of the movement that is life, being aware of the movement in your body and the movement that is the world outside you. Breathe and have a sense of your place within all this movement that we call life and death.