Sitting Above the Fray

I have this image of myself as being mindful, 
sitting above the fray.
 
 In my dreams.

The truth is, I’m not above the fray at all,
because the fray is my own mind.

For example, it’s never my intention
 to be blindsided by hate or greed.
But I do get blindsided -
in the sense that when they show up, I can’t see.
My clarity is gone. They are the fray.

So I do what I can, like I’m guessing we all do.
For me that means 
trying to notice hate and greed before I’ve acted on them;
once they arrive, staying interested in a non-partisan way;
and ultimately, trying to let them go.

Because I feel like, what else can I do?
I need to let them go if I want to be able to hear 
what others are saying.
And I need to hear what others are saying
to understand how to love them.
So what else can I do but let go, and listen?
What else can any of us do?

Transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 468. I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving if you’re in the U.S. Things were a little wild around here but fun. 

We’ve been examining the Hindrances, which are those states of mind and heart that arise and fall away, and that cloud the waters, making it hard to see clearly and for the heart to respond wisely and with compassion. The Hindrances again are desire or greed, aversion or hate, and then two pairs, sloth + torpor and restlessness + worry, and then doubt. 

Today I’ll say a few things about desire or greed, and aversion or hate. And also about how at least for me, it’s actually not about sitting above the fray at all. It’s about being in the fray, because that’s just how it is to be human.

So first, desire. Desire feels like wanting, often but not always wanting physical comfort but in my experience also wanting emotional comfort or solace or wanting things to be a certain way or different from the way they are now, and suffering under the misapprehension that if desire is fulfilled – if I get what we think I want – I’ll be happy. 

Benign example: I had plenty of desire last Thursday. I ate a full plate, and then was deluded into thinking that if I ate another plate of stuffing and gravy and other yummy things, and a little more pie, my tummy would be happy. The mouth, the tongue, the eyes, ears, even the fingers, and definitely the mind – got activated – convinced – and I kept eating, and I forgot to pay attention to how my body was feeling, which was…full. 

That’s the delusion of desire. The mind was full of colorful dyes, as the simile goes, or in my case, colorful foods, all of which were beautiful but which made it impossible for me to see clearly. And without that clarity, I overate.

Again it’s a fairly benign example but desire can take us down much more destructive paths. It’s the Hindrance (or one of them) that leads to addiction, whether to substances or billable hours or salary or saving the world. It’s what pushes us to run or swim or bike or ski or practice yoga asanas not a little bit beyond our capacity, if let’s say we’re building endurance or strength, but far beyond our capacity, so that we harm ourselves, to fulfill a sensory desire for, what?, endorphins, some imaginary secure future, something we’re under the misapprehension will bring permanent happiness, or at least end our pain.  

Colorful dyes or colorful foods or colorful rewards, and those colors occlude the present moment. And then I’m no longer paying attention to whether or not I’m full, or exhausted, or have enough. I’m no longer in the present moment, which is where wisdom resides, where I have the possibility of knowing how I feel and therefore how to move forward. The present where equanimity lives. Equanimity which I always need, and which I feel like we’re all going to need in the coming months and years. 

And so recalling Gil Fronsdal’s acronym, BELLA, for the Hindrances, first, we let the Hindrance BE, so in my case, notice and let desire be. It’s here, see it, stay with it. And then E, EXAMINE it. It’s powerful. I feel physically or mentally drawn to the stuffing, the pie; to working more hours; to pushing beyond what’s useful or safe. And then L, LESSEN. Ease up. Once there’s presence, there’s some agency, and we can decide to  ease up. And even to LET IT GO, the next L, the ideal, which with practice, it possible. And finally the A, APPRECIATE: appreciate that we can actually practice enough so that we can see desire arise, remember that desire is not our “fault” – who doesn’t have desire, ever? Appreciate that it will recede. Sometimes for me I feel released from desire. And finally, appreciate that we’re in this together – no one here has never had one too many pieces of pie, I’m guessing – and there’s community in just being human, because we’re all dealing with these five Hindrances even if we have no idea about that and no names for them and no practice. There’s community in that. So that’s desire. 

And then aversion, hate, ill will – works the same way.

So in my case, no red hats showed up at Thanksgiving so I didn’t get to practice with strong aversion on Thursday. But Friday I did – I got to practice with boiling-water mind, as the simile says. 

We have a situation on our road, here in rural Sonoma. There are a few neighbors who are, let’s say, “resistant to change.” That, combined with a road that’s nearly impassable after 40 years of neglect, makes for a challenge. So I’ve been using my negotiation skills and also my practice skills, such as they are, to try to cobble together a solution. And things had been going fairly well until Friday when one neighbor let loose with this torrent of rage that was frankly beyond anything I can recall in thirty years of practicing law. So that’s saying a lot.

And what happened for me was an lesson in humility. I went from astonished to eerily calm to completely outraged. Luckily I kept my mouth shut until he got off the line (although there was plenty of desire to yell back). But it was a good 45 minutes and many hugs before I could recalibrate. 

Have you had this? A moment when hate or anger just wells up, and there’s nothing to do but let it go through? With enough practice, the Hindrances don’t well up as often or as powerfully – the Dalai Lama famously saying when he was asked if he was still angry with the Chinese for occupying Tibet, “almost not” – and one of the interesting pieces on Friday was how much I felt both at the mercy of hate and at the same time able to watch it arise and recede. Do you know what I mean? You’ve probably seen this in your own experience: the hindrance of hate or anger or ill will, and seeing it arise, then recede? And to plug in BELLA again, not only seen and been with the ill will but examined it, let it lessen or attenuate before you said or did anything, and ultimately let it go?

And have you gotten as far as appreciation? Because I really feel like appreciation is key. When Gil talks about appreciating the Hindrances, and whenever I’ve heard talks about them from my teachers, to me it feels like the instruction is to appreciate them at the deepest possible level, and to bow to them. To bow to them as in, to take them as a gift. The gift of practice, the gift of seeing them for what they are: moments when, when we’re paying attention, we gain just a little more insight into how this unfathomable mind works – just a little more – and into how the fact is, this mind works the same way for all of us. To bow to that insight and to the truth that points to, which is that we’re all in this together, this life, on this earth, in this moment. And that doesn’t change, no matter who we are, or what path of practice we’re on, or even who we voted for last month. We’re all in this together.