Michelle Seely
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Noble Truth #3 The End of Suffering
The good news is that when we accept that the world is unsatisfactory and we accept that there is some suffering that is unavoidable –we can learn to not suffer extra from fighting to make the world change its ways. Clear seeing means we can be more skillful in grief by learning to face and grieve the unavoidable pains, and not to sign on for optional suffering.I learned about this on a month-long retreat.
For the first 10 long days I sat on my cushion in the big hall silently making speeches to the man i’d been dating about how he should be treating me, telling some imaginary judge (in detail with examples) what he should and shouldn’t be doing and saying and feeling. The speeches were well-crafted–I’d gone over and over them tweaking the flow of each argument till they sang. Each time, the judges’ gavel came down in favor of me!
Fifty or more imaginary victories and still the relationship was failing. I was tired and so, so bored by this topic. Still, I could not shut up.
I also couldn’t meditate. I sat there obsessing all day every day. On day 11 I was so sick of my mind I couldn’t sit anymore–so I left the hall and walked up the mountain. The speeches continued on the trail. I was making my case, again and again. But then, at some point as I was saying “He should …” I paused and something asked me: how do you know what he should do?
That voice and question stopped me. How did I know? A whole cascade of realizations followed and I saw how by thinking I knew what he should do in his life, and by going over and over it, I was creating so much extra suffering! I was disappointed and sad that the relationship was not going well, but by arguing to change this fact/him I was being unskillful, and I was believing thoughts that had no truth to them.The truth was, I was not in control. My speeches were excellent, and they brought about exactly zero changes.
For the next twenty days, armed with my new aha, I practiced interrupting the speeches. I found it was much more difficult to stop them if I let them get started–so I traced their beginning sensations back to the first iterations–to just before the words began. I found the very first edges of a speech started in my diaphragm. As a memory or complaint was just barely forming I could feel a slight contraction in my diaphragm–it was the valence–the feeling tone of aversion. When I could pause right there and say “you want to be in charge–you don’t like this” and keep that sensation company instead of letting the story get going, the obsessive arguing ceased.
That was a beautiful experience of interrupting the craving for control by being with the “no” in my diaphragm instead of speechifying and how that worked to reduce the suffering.
I don’t thinkk mine posted so here is is–maybe for the second time…
During meditation,BODHICHARYA
Awaken the Heart by Opening the MindDEVOTION–is that like discipline? I like the OHP notion of discipline as coming back to whatever thing, not giving up, not forgetting forever. DEVOTION has that aspect too–right? With fealty, a loyal and sober choice is made, and then the vow, the promise. So not the same, but is has discipline in it, and the promise.
Love is like that I think–not the first rushes of love but the longer forms of love–the kinds where devotion is key and every day or oftener the choice is made again to love, to stay and love no matter how fun it is or isn’t right then.
I have noticed that when I am tired and overworked I find fault. During those times, I have learned to feel the charged-upness of my energy and the sharp meanness of my thoughts–and to pause and smile to them with a little bow. “You must be tired, your love is all used up right now,” I say to myself and I give “Charged-Up” and the “Mean” a glass of water and a rest. I know they are telling me something–but it isn’t that anyone is bad, including me. They both get harsh when they are tired and thirsty.
That their harshness is not “true” has been a very good thing to learn and I have DEVOTION to thank for the lesson. DEVOTION to the dharma showed me out of my head and back to my body and my breath again and again. DEVOTION taught me to wait, to not know yet, to give the benefit of the doubt, to smile, to laugh at myself for falling one more time for the “authority” in the voice of Mean and the urgency Charged-up pushes on me.
DEVOTION, I thank you for your generous humble patience with my lapses, for your encouragement, and for your unwillingness to budge when I wanted to believe them and act on their behalf. And thank you always for your Mona Lisa smile🌸
“we must neither reject nor follow movement. Having recognised stillness, we can
let the mind return there each time. By remaining at ease whenever the change
takes place, the movement will dissolve by itself, like the wave which forms on the
surface of the ocean and which subsides into it again.”Start again–unlimited fresh starts, as Susan often says–is my favorite instruction of them all. I like how you notice that “Perfection cannot return your devotion” –so true! MY perfection doesn’t know much about my human life–she is only interested in flaws. Thanks for your post!
Jake, I love imagining the “raw joy” that was conjured when you saw your mentor playing after an absence–I’m smiling. I also love your quote “you are here because someone loved you” and how for me that idea spreads out to encompass all the moments and people and magic that allows me to be this me right now. The bad the good the ugly–all of it–plus sunlight, darkness and the possibility of love.
Years ago I was really struck by the Gratitude Hut at Spirit Rock in northern California. I sat inside of it, a little rough single small room set off by itself. Framed photos of teachers cover the walls. It was beautiful to sit there and feel all the wisdom and love that informs that place and the people there.
I would love to have a hut like that one day.
I love that through Susan my idea of “lineage” has expanded to include artists and pets, beaches and trees, and so can include so many beings and places that have held and inspired me. I have already begun collecting the photos that will cover its walls.
The first framed photos would include Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chödrön, HHDL, Lanikai Beach, my parents and grandparents, my children, certain friends, Julia Cameron, Monette, Carl Jung, Donna Orange, Toni Morrison, Lynne Jacobs, Gary Yontef… I would like to sit in my little hut with these honored teachers and the door flung open wide so we could all admire the world and sky together.