The Lesson I Keep Learning

The Consolation of No Exit

“You may want Zen practice to make you calmer, more relaxed, and more peaceful. But though these things may occur, they are not what practice is about. In fact, Zen practice is learning how to live in hell, the hell of suffering and the hell of creating suffering. Practice is experiencing life and responding to whatever arises in the midst of hellishness.”

— Zen teacher Elihu Genmyo Smith, from his book Everything Is the Way

Human life is not always easy, even for the most blessed among us, and for some it is an unfathomable nightmare. We never know with certainty what the next moment might bring. It’s not hard to understand why we have rampant alcoholism, drug addiction, phone addiction, overeating, spiritual by-passing, hours spent hypnotized by mindless TV or social media, compulsive shopping, and a host of other escapes that offer temporary relief followed by worsening hangovers.

But if we’re very lucky, at some point, we discover the possibility of stopping all the escapes, of simply being here in the middle of the pain or the chaos or the darkness or whatever it is. Fully embracing and being this moment, just as it is.

And, surprise, surprise—it’s not what we thought it was, and the feelings that seemed unbearable a moment ago suddenly become bearable, even interesting, and often even dissolve away altogether. We tune into a bigger context—the open aware space beholding it all. And we find that at the very core of every disturbing thought or sensation, there is no-thing at all. And this no-thing-ness is alive and vibrant and full of energy.

But for most (if not all) of us, suffering comes back along with the mirage-like apparently separate “me” who seems to be at the center of it. In my experience, there is no finish-line. It’s a lifelong pathless path of awakening here and now.

One night recently, I found myself having one of those “beam me up, Scotty” experiences. I felt as if I couldn’t stand to be this body for another second—some primal sorrow, loneliness, restlessness, fear or unease suddenly seemed to possess me. I felt smothered by seemingly unbearable feelings and scary sensations. Everything seemed to be closing in. I was desperate to get away, to get out of my skin. And even though I knew better, having learned this lesson and written books and given talks about it many, many times for many decades, I nonetheless desperately chewed on my fingers and contemplated a number of other possible escapes before finally settling down on my meditation cushion and just simply being here resisting nothing.

Instantly, I felt better. I’d been running from an imaginary problem. The sensations and the feelings had been real enough, and it had seemed that I was experiencing them, but I actually hadn’t been experiencing them, not fully. I had been pushing them away, resisting them, trying to avoid them. My attention had been hypnotized by that old story of being trapped inside my skin having an unbearable experience, desperate to get away but unable to get out, claustrophobic and seemingly doomed. And it had all seemed very real.

Once I finally stopped my frantic escape efforts and sat down and surrendered to being just this moment, even if that meant burning in the flames of hell forever, I found that I wasn’t in hell after all. Nor was I trapped inside my skin. There was no “me” anymore and no boundary between inside and outside. The sensations and feelings that had seemed unbearable when I was running from them were now totally bearable. In fact, they were rapidly dissolving into thin air. Instead of feeling stuck in a nightmare, there was a sense of vast spaciousness and peace.

Why did I put this off for so long? Well, the energetic undertow of habit and conditioning is a powerful force, even when we know better. When we finally stop running, when we finally surrender and open, the force of habit turns out to be literally nothing at all. But until then, it is a very powerful current. And that hypnotic trance tends to come back, no matter how many times it has disappeared and been rendered powerless, because it is a deep groove in the bodymind. And just as different cities have different weather patterns, so different people have different weather conditions—different nature and nurture, different conditioning, different life experiences, different neurochemistry—so for some, the stormy weather is more persistent than it is for others. It doesn’t help to compare ourselves to others. We’re not here to be somebody else, and ultimately, we are all the One Reality, all of us waking up together.

Does it always go as well as it did for me the other night when we finally stop running? No. Sometimes, even if we sit down with the intention of just being here, in some way, we’re still running. The bodymind is still contracted into a tight fist and the mind is still racing. We’re not able to instantly relax and open and let go. And, of course, the little “me,” which is only a thought, cannot make the bodymind relax on command through effort or will-power. So, when that happens, all we can do is be fully present with the upset. Embrace it fully. Feel it. Taste it. Be curious about it. Explore the sensations—where are they in the body, what do they feel like, what thoughts are driving it all? Not trying to control or fix it—just letting it all be.

And if we notice that we’re doing all this in a result-oriented way, with the idea that doing this will make the upset go away, that’s still the movement of resistance. We’re still trying to escape. And we can’t make that not happen either! So, if there’s tension and resistance and efforting, is it possible not to fight with any of it, but to simply be as we are in this moment, however that is? Can we simply be awake to all of it in a non-judgmental way? Noticing (seeing, or awaring) is enough. We don’t need to go to war with anything that shows up. In some mysterious way, all of it is the path and none of it is really a problem.

Awareness has space for everything to be as it is. It clings to nothing, it resists nothing. It truly is unconditional love. Devotion is its nature. The pathless path of waking up now is about being devoted to simply being awake to and as this life, just as it is—not pushing anything away, not trying to hold onto anything. It may even be possible to enjoy the disturbance and the messiness, to see the radiance and the beauty and the Holy Reality in that too.

“Spiritual practice” can sound like hard work, and at times it certainly can be. But actually, it’s the resistance, the suffering, the trying, that’s hard work—maintaining that tight fist, holding on, trying to control and manage everything, trying to make something happen—that takes effort. Letting go is actually effortless and easy.

Ultimately, we realize that we don’t need to do anything, that there is nothing to accomplish, that everything is already accomplishing itself perfectly, that the perfection actually includes all the things that seem imperfect like being a drunk or getting distracted or chewing on our fingers or exploding in anger. There is always just THIS, this unfathomable no-thing-ness shining forth everywhere as everything, and no escape is ever actually possible because everything is it, even the apparent escapes!

And yet, the deep longing to transform and awaken, and the discernment that distinguishes between clarity and delusion is all part of this natural functioning. And even after the non-separation and wholeness of everything has been deeply seen and realized, most (if not all) of us will still find ourselves overwhelmed at times by seemingly unbearable feelings, trying desperately to escape by clenching the proverbial fist tighter and tighter, as happened in my life the other night. In those moments of being engulfed in the hypnotic trance, this bigger truth is not (at that moment) being seen or felt or realized (made real). And dredging it up then as some kind of belief just doesn’t cut it. That’s just trying to fight thinking with more thinking. Instead, sitting down in silence, doing nothing, expecting nothing, simply being present, can open everything up.

Having explored a multitude of different paths and approaches to waking up from suffering, I don’t think there’s any one right way for this lifelong, present moment awakening and releasing to unfold—each of us has to find our own way through the tangles of embodied human life, and some people face much more challenging tangles than others. I’m very aware of what a profoundly lucky and blessed life I’ve had. And I would never presume to know what someone else needs or what will free them from the imaginary maze of unnecessary suffering. But in my experience, whatever we need at each moment has a way of showing up, and the magic key to awakening always has something to do with the power of awareness and the simplicity of presence.

In one way or another, spirituality is about waking up (now) from the sense of being separate and encapsulated that is at the root of our suffering. But discovering wholeness and non-substantiality doesn’t mean denying or ignoring our human beingness or dismissing the world and everyday life as “just illusions” to be transcended. As it says in the Wisdom Beyond-Wisdom Mind Sutra (commonly known as the Heart Sutra): “this world is no different from emptiness, and emptiness is no different from this world, this world is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly this world.” (David Hinton translation from his newly published book, The Way of Ch’an).

Sometimes the pathless path to Here and Now involves what feels like serious hard work, and sometimes it involves what feels playful, effortless and carefree. Sometimes it emphasizes the absolute, sometimes the relative. We can’t land anywhere because everything is moving, and a true path will always pull whatever rug we’re currently standing on out from under us.

The imaginary and unnecessary part of suffering is in how we think about the pain and difficult circumstances in our lives, how we try to escape from them, how we solidify the pain and make it bigger, and how we sometimes get attached to our suffering as a familiar way of life or a victim identity. Who would we be without it? We may be quite surprised when we first discover our attachment to our suffering!

We can also get attached to bliss. It can be wonderful to enjoy and rest in open spacious presence, to feel into this no-thing-ness that is so free and effortless and vibrantly alive. This spacious no-thing-ness is actually always here, it’s the very nature of Here and Now, but any experience of spacious openness, as this but not that, is always impermanent—if it came, it will go. Sooner or later, an unwanted train of thought will appear, or maybe a mosquito, or we’ll need to use the toilet or go to work. We’ll have to navigate relationships of all kinds and deal with all the events of daily life. We’ll inevitably read or hear about, or maybe directly encounter, the sometimes horrific cruelty in the world. We may have to flee from wildfires, hurricanes or even an invading army. Even in the most blessed of lives, we will face difficulties and challenges. Things will push our buttons and upset us. Emotions will arise, old habits will flare up. We will sometimes behave in unkind ways and make many apparent mistakes. Loved ones will die. Illnesses and disabilities will befall us, and finally, old age and death will arrive. This is the nature of this living reality, that it shows up in infinite variations and polarities, and it includes everything. There’s no heaven without hell, and no nirvana without samsara. They go together.

So I encourage myself and all of us, when hell appears, to discover what really works and what doesn’t, to find the still point, the no-thing-ness, in the very center of the storm, to discover that we are this still point and that it is boundless and ever-present, even in the midst of turmoil—that what comes and goes is only the endlessly changing weather and the intermittent mirage of “me” as a separate fragment. I encourage us to see how impersonal the whole show is, how common to all of us our human experiences are, to find the beauty everywhere, to be kind to ourselves, and to recognize that in every moment, we and everyone else are doing the only possible given the infinite causes and conditions that are manifesting as this moment.

Does that mean we have no choice about the next moment? Don’t pick up a belief that we do or we don’t, but when that moment arrives, find out! Explore all of this directly. Be open to the unexpected! Remember that any way we put this into words is never quite right. Life itself always slips past the imaginary boundaries and definitions. No one really knows what this is, or what is or isn’t possible. No formulations can ever contain this wild and free living actuality that we are and that everything is.

Much Love to us all…