asked. “Where are yours?” answered the rabbi. “Mine? But I am only a visitor here.” “So am I,” replied the rabbi.
In the early 70s I traveled to India in search of a spiritual path and found myself in a Tibetan refugee village. I found a community of people who had lost so much: their country, their homes, their possessions, and their families. What was so stunning was the absence of despair, rage, hatred, and desire for vengeance. Their openhearted welcome and generosity, the smiles upon their faces, the devotion that permeated the camp, were a testimony to the reality that they had not lost their heart.
There is a sacred hunger rooted in our hearts—a yearning for freedom, happiness, connectedness, and peace. It is a hunger that prevents us from surrendering to despair and disconnection, that inspires us to continue searching for a way of feeling truly intimate in this world, at one with life, free from conflict and sorrow. In our confusion, this sacred hunger becomes distorted and diverted; it turns into craving and the pursuit of projected promise invested in experience and things outside ourselves.
Renunciation is not a dismissal of the world. It does not involve surrendering the joy found in all the precious and delightful impressions and experiences that will visit us in this life. Through withdrawing the projected promise invested in sensation, impression, and experience, we learn to find a sense of balance that embraces the pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral experience. Believing that happiness and fulfillment lie outside of ourselves we project onto the 10 thousand objects and experiences in this life the power for them to devastate, enrage, gratify, or elate us. We then become a prisoner of those 10 thousand things. Withdrawing this projected promise, we can deeply appreciate the pleasant, remain steady in the midst of the unpleasant, and be fully sensitive to the neutral impressions and experiences life brings. We discover that the root of happiness lies not in what we are experiencing but how we are experiencing it. It is the withdrawal of the projected promise and the surrender of the fear of deprivation which enables a relationship to life that is rooted in sensitivity, compassion, and intimacy. Craving propels us outwardly, away from ourselves and from this moment, into an endless quest for certainty and identity. By exploring the energy of craving and loosening its hold, we are returned to ourselves, able to acknowledge the sacred hunger within us for intimacy and awakening. At ease within ourselves, we discover a profound refuge and happiness rooted in our own capacities for awareness and balance.
The Enlightened and the Unenlightened
The Buddha spoke about the distinction between an enlightened and an unenlightened person. Both the enlightened and the unenlightened experience feelings, sensations, sounds, sights, and events that can be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. When an unenlightened person encounters the unpleasant experience they grieve, lament, and become distraught and distracted. Two levels of sorrow are experienced; one in the actual experience and one in the reactions and story about it. It is as if a person crossing the pathway of an archer was shot by an arrow; whether enlightened or unenlightened, that person would experience pain. The difference lies in the level of both the story and the fear that are added to the experience. In seeing the archer prepare to shoot a second arrow, the unenlightened person would already be anticipating its pain, building a story centered around living with a wounded leg and entertaining thoughts of anger towards the archer. In the heart of the unenlightened person, layers of aversion and associations with the past and future lead them to depart from the reality of what is actually being experienced in that moment. The unpleasant experience is layered with aversion and resistance. We try to end the unpleasant experience by finding one that is more pleasant or by suppressing or avoiding it. In the midst of any of the unpleasant experiences, we need to ask ourselves what is more painful, the actual experience or the stories, fear, and resistance with which we surround it. Calm simplicity does not depend upon the annihilation or control of the unpleasant experience but is born of our willingness to let go of the layers of our stories and fears.
The enlightened person is not exempt from any form of feelings, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, but is not bound or governed by them. The arrow will hurt, but the pain of the body will not be matched by sorrow and struggle in the mind. Blame, judgment, and retaliation are the children of fear. Wise responsiveness, equanimity, and discriminating wisdom are the children of deep understanding. The enlightened person would find little value in shouting, “This is unfair” at the world, would not seek to take revenge upon the archer nor vow to never venture out again. The enlightened person knows the pathways of wise response rather than blind reaction. Surrendering the story is not a dismissal of the wounded leg but is an empowerment, releasing the capacity to care for what needs to be cared for with compassion and responsiveness, letting go of all the extra layers of fear, apprehension, and blame.
The pleasant experience evokes a different response and different story line in us. We want more, we don’t want it to end, we strategize the ways to defend it—it is layered with craving and grasping. We have a moment of calm during meditation and find ourselves rehearsing our debut as the next world-famous teacher. A smile from a colleague and in our minds we are already embroiled in the romance of the century. Once more our stories divorce us from the simplicity of the moment and we are puzzled and disappointed when these stories are frustrated. Pleasant experiences are hijacked by craving and wanting, and once more we are not living in the simplicity of the moment but in the dramas of our minds. In the midst of the pleasant experience, we can learn to let go of our stories, projections, and fantasies. We can learn to love what is.
The neutral experiences, sounds, sights, and sensations we encounter become layered with voices of confusion that tell us that something is missing, something needs to be added. If the things of this world neither delight nor threaten us they are often dismissed, ignored, or simply missed. The tree outside our window, made familiar by time, no longer appears to offer anything to attract our attention. We fail to notice the texture of its leaves, its changing colors, its growing and aging, the way the sun reflects on its leaves. We believe we need something more stimulating and exciting for it to be worthy of our attention. In learning to stay in the present, we discover that it is the power of our attention that makes all things worthy.
There are experiences of pain that are inevitable in this life, rooted in our bodies as they age or sicken. In our lives we will all experience loss, separation, and contact with those who threaten us. There are levels of sorrow and pain that are optional, rooted in fear, aversion, and grasping. We need to learn to let go of the stories that carry our fears and wanting, we need to learn to see life, ourselves, others, as they actually are. Simplicity is always available. Learning to let go of the layers of our stories and cravings, learning to let go of our craving for the pleasant and our aversion for the unpleasant, is the discovery of peace.
In the Tao it is said, “In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is gained. In the pursuit of freedom, every day something is let go of.” We tend to hold grandiose ideas of renunciation, regarding it as a spiritually heroic task or breakthrough experience on our path that will happen at some future time. A spiritual life asks us to hold onto nothing—not our opinions, beliefs, judgments, past, nor dreams of the future. It seems a formidable task but we are not asked to do it all at once. Life is a journey of 10 thousand renunciations, sometimes in a single day. We are not asked to be an expert, but always a beginner. The only moment we can let go is the moment we are present in.
The Wisdom of Impermanence
As we reflect upon the nature of life and ourselves, we discover that there is an innate naturalness to letting go. The nature of all life is change; winter lets go its hold to change into spring; for summer to emerge spring must end and this season can only last for a time before it fades into autumn, which in turn lets go for winter to emerge once more. In the same way, our infancy was let go of as we emerged into our childhood. All of our life transitions, our capacity to grow and mature, depend upon a natural process of letting go of what went before. No matter how strenuous our efforts, we cannot make one single thing last. No matter how much we delight in a pleasant thought, experience,
