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Workable Mind
Jeffrey
Veteran
I'm posting this because we have had so many questions with people wondering if they are doing meditation right and sensing a problem. Or wondering what meaning is.
A free e-mail question and answer session of Lama Shenpen with her students.
A free e-mail question and answer session of Lama Shenpen with her students.
Summary: When irritability and boredom come up, we tend to look outside ourselves for something exciting that will make us feel more alive, but this is just addictive behaviour. Instead, if we can turn towards this whole process with great kindness, we can make friends with our experience and find a sense of spaciousness and aliveness.
Student:
I have wanted to write to you for a while but I think that I wait too long and then I don’t know where to start. What’s cleared it up a bit is surprisingly the emergence of unexplained anger. It does not feel safe to me and I want it gone before it turns into action.
Lama Shenpen:
Anger manifests as thoughts but also as the feelings and emotions that underlie the thoughts. Often the discomfort is actually more or less physical and you can notice that but it doesn’t necessarily go away.
Noticing it can wake you up to the fact that your feelings and emotions are needing your attention - they are not just going to go away. They have a message for you and since ultimately all messages come to us from the Buddha Nature - they are fundamentally good.
But are we listening to them properly? If we think ‘anger is bad and uncomfortable and embarrassing and I want it to go away’ we are not listening to its message. It is important to think of anger as ‘no’ to something and ‘yes’ to something else - always. So get behind your feeling and/or emotion and try to link into the value or living quality that the ‘yes’ is about.
For example, if you are irritable and bored - that is a ‘yes’ to ease and interest, meaningfulness and action that flows from the heart rather than from a sense of oppression.You may find that more empathy with the ‘yes’ supplies you with a way forward in which the energy of the anger becomes useful. You can think of it as a messenger that has brought some kind of blessing.
Student:
Tonight it came to me that boredom seems to be what is causing this anger. I want something important or enjoyable to happen, and I don’t want to wait. I am constantly checking email, snail mail, texts, phone messages for something new and exciting. I am looking for that high that will jump start me. But I am finding that these highs are few and far between and I do not feel comfortable with this mind set. I feel like an addict.
Lama Shenpen:
Yes you are an addict. We all are. Samsara is an addiction. Samsara is ruled by Mara – and Mara literally means death, the very opposite of life. If we are plodding along without lifting our heads up out of Mara’s world, then sooner or later it will dawn on us that it is simply lifeless and meaningless.
This is when we mistakenly look for something to entertain us, to make it more exciting and interesting. That seems an easier option than actually facing our addiction to samsara. Instead of tackling our basic delusion and blind habitual patterns, we want to somehow make them work in order to feed our egos just that little bit longer. This boredom we feel or are trying to fend off actually comes from ego-clinging. Instead of recognizing that the qualities we yearn for are in fact intrinsically available from within the nature of our being, we project them out there somewhere and take up the position of ourselves being somehow separate from them – yearning for them. All this is vividly described in Trungpa Rinpoche’s Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.
It is good that you are noticing your boredom and addictive behavior. You now know what it is that you are going to have to come to terms with. It is no use judging yourself as a very bad person who has only just noticed this - that is not the point.
The point is, with great kindness, to turn towards the whole process and really experience it as fully as you can. Touch it with your attention, reach into it to explore it and familiarize yourself with it in a kind and friendly way. It is as if you were saying, “Hey, you are interesting – I want to really feel you out properly’. Such attention ends up leading into a sense of spaciousness – and aliveness. Let me know if it doesn’t.
This applies in daily life just as much as in meditation.
3
Comments
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Already know you that which you need
Yoda
:clap:
Along with the emptiness thread you've been blowing me away today Jeff. The Lama's comments remind me of something I read in a book by Thich Nhat Hanh about approaching ones feelings whatever they are with an attitude of openess and welcoming. Of course easier said than done. Time for some more metta practice methinks towards myself and my feelings.
This morning I had some disturbed feelings probably due to forgetting to take my orphenadrine to counter act the restlessness brought on by the flupenthixol. Did some metta practice and directed some metta towards the disturbed feelings bascically trying to approach them with an attitude of acceptance. The feelings are still there but theres no desire to be rid of them and as a result they are not dominating my conciousness.
Great discussion mate and thanks to you and your Lama for the advice.