All these years I’ve meditated and been committed to a truly noble path, supported by extraordinary teachers and spiritual community, I kept waiting to calm down. Not to get so worked up– to have my big emotions and wild mind gently subside. I think I’ve finally stopped expecting that to happen, and started believing in what I’ve read and been taught over and over– that I’m fine just as I am.
Why now? The other night around 1am, after a stressful grant application process, I read a poorly composed email and got really angry. However, while quite expertly pitching a fit, with audience, at the surface, the rest of me rested in a sort of calm clarity that wasn’t reacting, or judging. Awareness prevailed, emotion subsided, and I was shocked.
We’ve all heard the cute admonishment, “You are what you eat.” From a meditation standpoint, “You are what you think” is a sound statement that after a few years of steady meditation, interlaced with bouts of mood-itation, I believe in from experience. Change how you think, check your motivation and amp up your positive aspirations, and you begin to change who and what you are at a very deep level.
“You are what you feel:” is this as true a statement? In the tradition that guides my life, Tibetan Buddhism, the Tibetan word for feelings or emotions often translates as afflictive emotions, while the word for thoughts, or concepts, usually translates as discursive thoughts. So am I afflicted by my emotions, or afflicting others, and merely led astray or burdened with non-essential stuff (one definition of discursive) in terms of my thoughts? One thing I’m sure of: stringing thoughts together like a train, constantly anticipating the future and retracing the past, only leads to more confusion, because I cannot be certain that every thought I have is altruistic and mindful. And even if I was, having tasted the open space that really is available when thinking subsides, when thoughts are just allowed to dissolve like the wispy, insubstantial things they are, I wouldn’t trade that glimpse into the non-dual expanse for a truck-load of shiny, happy, thoughts that still involve me taking myself seriously.
As for emotions, letting oneself be run by emotions is both exhausting and potentially dangerous. (Sometimes I read the news to remind myself of this.) Emotions are regarded differently than thoughts though. Of course, emotional responses, however grandiose or subtle, fuel thoughts and then actions, if things go that far. But within emotional reaction is a unique opportunity to watch on mind, as one of my teachers advises. And within big emotions–strong reactions and assertions of “how I feel”–is a unique opportunity to maintain awareness and even equanimity, while experiencing genuine and natural emotions. The tricky things is that these opportunities arise and dissolve in a heartbeat.
And for so long, I’ve slept through that heartbeat. I’ve thrown my fit, had my emotional response, and come through the other end feeling bashful and utterly lacking in awareness and grace. How many times have I heard or read from reliable sources that emotions don’t go away, and they don’t need to. Whatever our emotional constitution may be-angry, jealous, full of desire, inclined to dullness, proud as a rooster–are the tools we have to work with on and off the cushion to foster awareness and truly awaken to our in-dwelling divinity. Every moment on the cushion does inform our whole existence. It’s these moments when clarity and awareness prevail in a tough situation that affirms this. More practice needed? Definitely. Can I accept myself for what I am and have confidence within that? Now, I think so.
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I hear two very different sentiments in your post.
The first is that you believe that you are fine as you are, even when you are getting angry and acting out (audience included).
If you believed that you are fine as you are, then why would you ever make an effort to change your behavior?
In my own life as a Jew with a somewhat eclectic background, I don’t know of any teacher, Jewish or not, who would say that if you were an excessively angry person, that you should simply accept yourself as you are and not try somehow to modify that behavior. I hope that’s not what you’re saying.
A Jewish method of modifying our anger response is to cultivate the awareness of our standing in God’s presence at all times (“shee-vee-tee Ha-shem l’negdee tah-mid”). Where God is, there is no room for vanity, pride, selfish anger or excessive value of the self.
Cultivating awareness can be done by meditation, learning Torah, and in other ways. One Jewish approach is to do a heshbon ha-nefesh (an accounting of the soul); a powerful awareness practice from the Mussar school. Alan Morinis describes it on page 107 of his book “Climbing Jacob’s Ladder”. He finishes his description by saying: “That’s the whole practice. It seems so minimal, but what these directions don’t reveal is the impact that the heshbon ha-nefesh practice can have on on raising our level of self-awareness moment-to-moment. It does this by directing us to be watchful for inner fault lines as they are revealed in the small tremors of everyday life.”
I have a remarkable Jewish teacher who was also trained in the martial arts in China; today he teaches students in both of those worlds, though he himself is a completely committed Jew. He characterizes Judaism as the discipline of “reality experienced with no illusion.” He was invited to become a monk in a monastery but declined because he felt that being Jewish allowed him to do his awareness practice in the much more rigorous and difficult environments of family and community life.
The second sentiment I hear is that you sense that something is changing at a deep level as a result of your meditation/awareness practice.
When you change who and what you are at a very deep level, won’t it eventually be reflected in your outward behavior? So, if all goes well, you may eventually see a change in your anger reaction. Do you expect that?
Is that a significant part of what you’re doing in meditation, making an effort to stay awake enough to eventually allow a change in a behavior that you want to change?
Or perhaps, language being what it is (as I often hear from Zoketsu Norman Fischer), I’m not understanding you well at all. Perhaps what you’re saying is that you’re fine *now* with yourself as you are, once your inner self has changed and you’ve cultivated an inner calm clarity. Is that it?
With respect, Len
i can’t speak for anne, but i would like to offer a few of my own thoughts to this conversation:
i think the concept of holding and loving who are you at this moment, at the same time as shining a light of awareness on your self and actions in the hope that you might become your best self with practice and patience, is one piece of any spiritual path.
i don’t think this is so contradictory (or black and white), it’s just the way it is.
also, i think often the behavior we most want to change, is just a reaction or symptom of something else, and through our practice of awareness and compassion, we get at the roots and see shifts of behavior and thought patterns that affect all of us, and maybe more subtly change our outward actions and reactions (like angry outbursts- it doesn’t mean you won’t get angry, that’s probably impossible, but you will not be controlled by your anger)…
I have to agree with Alison on this one. I too, like the author, started to meditate with the idea that it would make me a better and different person – more calm, less affected by anxiety, etc. I think it HAS made me a better person but not because the person I was before was “bad.” I think it’s made me better by learning to love that which I thought needed changing – all the meanness and cruelty I inflicted on others was rooted in my own deep suffering – and telling myself to be different reinforced that suffering. Bringing compassion and radical acceptance to it was the only way to heal.
You might appreciate Robert Aitken’s words in his recent book “Miniatures of a Zen Master”. This section is titled “Liking Yourself” (page 17):
“A lot of us start out on the practice because we don’t accept ourselves fully. Under good tutelage we find ourselves in a process of forgetting ourselves, and realize that this is really the way to uncover the unique one that has been there all along. …”
Interstingly, the “unique one” is not “the observer” that Anne refers to as: “the rest of me rested in a sort of calm clarity that wasn’t reacting, or judging.”
The calm “observer” that Anne mentions is found through meditation. Finding it teaches us that our thoughts and emotions are not the real “self”.
But it turns out that the “observer” is also not the real self.
or it’s all of that at the same time. one thing i’ve learned through meditation is that everything is subjective, it’s all relative, and it’s all the same thing (one, echad, etc).
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