Don't Put Yourself on Trial

How diligently are you practicing? How steady is your mind? Are these questions useful? And why do we even ask them?

I was asking myself these questions all the time. Kind of relentlessly. Then a teacher asked me why I was putting myself on trial.

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That's exactly what I was doing.

We do want to be diligent and we do want to steady our minds. But let's not put ourselves on trial. Or at least let's talk about that, on this episode.

Transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call #318, on September 23rd. It’s nice to be back – I missed you last week.

Let’s stay with Chapter 7 of the Dhammapada, the Arahant. Here are two of the last few verses:

For a person who, like the earth, is untroubled, who is well-practiced…, who is like a lake without mud, there is no more wandering. 

Calm in mind, speech, and action, and released through right understanding, such a person is fully at peace.

First, sadly, the earth is no longer untroubled. I love the idea, though. Depending on how old you are, you might be able to remember back to a time when the earth seemed untroubled. I can. Although even then, it was probably troubled. How long have we been poisoning the earth? Since the Industrial Revolution? Before that? I was watching the Giants game last night and there was a commercial for RoundUp. Unbelievable. I thought that stuff was illegal. The earth is in trouble. So maybe we can’t use that metaphor anymore. 

But starting at the beginning, “for a person who is well-practiced” – what does this mean? Do you consider yourself well-practiced? I feel like I could do so much more. I could sit more, I could do more yoga, I could sit more retreats. My practice experience is nothing compared to my teachers, of course, although it could have been, if I’d been as diligent as they have been throughout their lives.

Then again, Roshi Joan Halifax said to me recently, “Don’t put yourself on trial.” It wasn’t a coincidence – she knows I’m a lawyer – but for me, it’s the perfect metaphor. Maybe take a moment and ask yourself again, “Am I well-practiced?” And this time, ask without putting yourself on trial.

I’ve always thought of mindfulness as a multi-leveled practice. I see it in three levels. 

First, I can be sitting and notice that my mind has wandered. 

Then on the next level up, or down if you prefer, I can notice how I’m relating to the wandering mind. This is where I have some agency, although not much. 

That’s because my relationship to my wandering mind springs into being, to use a very unfortunate term from my ancient law school past, super quickly. This is also true in portable practice. We notice something and almost instantaneously, we react to it with one feeling or another. We might feel good about it, we might feel badly about it, or we might not really care – but it’s one of those basic three feelings. 

This reaction is conditioned. The whole process is conditioned, but this link in the chain is a place where it’s easier, for me anyway, to actually see the conditioning. Think about it: you probably know how you generally react to your own wandering mind. For many years I reacted with frustration, even exasperation. These days I tend more towards a kind of tisk, tisk, a gentle scolding, or even, on a really good morning, just a smile. 

Whatever the reaction, it’s happening because our habits of mind, which arise from countless causes and conditions. Which is good news because we can change at least one of the conditions.

We can’t change the conditions by wishing our reaction was different, or striving to make it different, though. We can change it at the next level up (or down, if you see it that way). In other words, the mind wanders. We notice the wandering mind. We react – let’s say it’s me, so, with gentle scolding. And now the question becomes, how do I react, or respond, to that scolding? In other words, what condition do I want to create, in the moment of noticing scolding is happening? 

I get to decide. I can relate with dismay that, “scolding happened again.” In that case, the condition I’ve created is dismay. Disappointment. And that’s the state of mind I’m cultivating. Or, I can be unperturbed by the scolding mind. Not upset. Not disappointed. Not dismayed. If I choose this, I’m being non-contentious towards my own experience: scolding is just what happened. I can decide not to put myself on trial. 

When we choose non-contention, it seems to make room for something fundamental to change. It makes room to choose love and self-compassion, over whatever other habituated ways of relating to our frustrated mind, our scolding mind, our imperfect mind. Our imperfections in general.  

And even though that love and self-compassion are inserted into the mix in relation to the scolding and not yet automatically in relation to the wandering mind, they trickle down (or up if you’re seeing it that way). So that over time, as we undertake and intentional, and for me, difficult but yummy, process, of loving the wandering mind, and loving the “frustrated-because-it’s-wandering” mind, eventually the frustration dissolves. I can say this because it happened for me: frustration became scolding at worst, and smiling, at best.

When we don’t put ourselves on trial, we’re also not occluding our lives. We’re examining and relating to what we see with gentle but committed intention, instead of trying to whip ourselves into shape like we would for a trial. We’re breathing out kindness, letting the snow inside the snow globe settle, cultivating a mind that is clear, like a lake without mud, as the verse says.

To me this is the state of “no more wandering,” or at least much less wandering. So that the idea, the practice, of being calm in mind, speech, and action, and released through right understanding – makes perfect sense to me in the sense that, yes, such a person is fully at peace. 

We just have to watch out not to cultivate contentiousness rather than peace. Because we can’t get there by putting ourselves on trial.

Maybe we can try mediation instead of going straight to trial. Or some restorative justice, instead of doing battle with our own wandering, frustrated, minds. Or maybe we can just let go a little bit more, understand a little bit more, love a little bit more. Maybe then, the mud will clear. 

Let’s sit.