This was useful from the point of view that 'its good to know'. That there is a part of me that is fretful, fed up and angry. In particularly with there being one major crisis in the world after another. I would like an uneventful period where we can quietly get on with things. Basically saying I want the world to be different to how it actually is. I'd like to be able to safely avert my gaze from it for a while. If only these things were not here, then I would not be silently suffering so abjectly.
There is a tendency, in my practice at least, to turn the Buddha's Noble Truth that 'life is unsatisfactory' into a mission statement - 'the practice of containment, management and eradication of suffering'. Basically the 4 Right Efforts**- but on high dosage steroids. This is understandable, its painful, why put up with it. Identification with our own suffering can stimulate empathy and compassion for others in pain. So it does have something to commend it. Suffering is endemic, its hard wired, its everywhere, it affects everyone. Its universality being undoubtedly why the Buddha chose to focus on it in the first place.
He highlighted suffering simply to be an example, it was not his central point. The focus was meant to be on our desire for things to be other than what they are. To be in full control of what enters in and out of our experience. Suffering is then used as a red flag, alerting us to be mindful of any impulses that wish for what we are experiencing not to be there. That we want something else entirely, further amplifying the amount of pain present. Its our own salt we hold ready to rub into our own wounds.
I have a commonly held self delusion, that being fed up or bored with what is or is not happening, means its high time for it to move on. This time reality must conform to my will, it must do so now. A self pitying view associated with this is that "I never get what I want, I really have been hard done to by life' Another is that 'for all the effort I put in I should reap beneficial rewards ' Plus one of a few merit reward viewpoints that Western capitalism inculcates in us from a young age. 'I've been good, I've been productive, where are my sweeties?'
A downside of these types of views is that if something does not succeed, its not the view or reality that is held to account, but yourself who is deficient, yourself who is at fault. You become a failure because your business failed, for instance.
'I never get what I want' - because I am fated not to,
'I never get what I want' - because failure is written in my DNA.
' I never get what I want' - because I am a uniquely bad person.
'I never get what I want' - because of bad karma from a previous life.
'I never get what I want' because I am being punished for even existing.
'I never get what I want' - because I'm completely useless at life.
And so it goes on and on, digging deeper into the 'I am uniquely unworthy' viewpoint. There are other views to explore in relation to this such as what success is, what it looks like to you. But that's a tangent I'll not go down today.
But lets just say - gratefulness - its helpful.
Usually if I worry, its about something going wrong and if it were to go wrong what the consequences might be. Mainly on a personal well being level. This type of predictive thinking is very loaded, conjuring all sorts of unfounded emotions and fears into being. It becomes difficult to separate the facts from the prejudicial biases, as they blend into one another. Its no longer about what actually happened anymore. The story you've constructed has become so paramount it alters your perceptions of the reality right before you.
I know that the view that 'nothing ever goes right for me' has a back story. Based on the emotional consequences of running, then closing, of my Art Shop, which I ran singlehandedly. But that was over thirty years ago. Yet any fearfulness I might hold over our current business surviving has its foundations in the latter years of the 1990's. Surrounded by a cluster of other incidents I call upon, should I want to make this story line conclusive.
This colouring of my present perceptions, can manifest in feeling afraid of a quiet shop with nothing to do to keep me busy. Constantly thinking up things to do to keep myself occupied. I recognise I have been here before. The current lull in trade during the winter months in Cottonwood Home has on occasions triggered these old associations. I can mostly see them coming. Though its a bit like seeing a dust storm looming on the horizon, I'm not always able to get out of its way. There are days when I simply have to allow it to pass through me like a toxic ghost.
Reverend Leoma at the Zen Priory in Norwich always encouraged people to look beneath the surface current experience for what was underlying it. To keep asking at each level what is underneath this. So, if I start with my anxiety around a quiet shop, underneath that is a fear of something going wrong, underneath that is an old story surrounding the failure of my art business, underneath is the view that I am a failure, underneath that a fear of having wasted my life, underneath that is a fear of loosing my life too soon. Before I've done whatever it is I need to do.
Life's failures are like these little whispers of death, on the way to the big death drum roll at the end. These failures are often perceived as mortally wounding. However, should I place the idea of my death alongside my present day anxieties, worries or concerns they instantly dwindle in power, influence and significance. Death is a much much bigger deal. Suddenly I feel much more open to being grateful for what I do have. After all I am still alive and still kicking. I run a little shop. I live in a beautiful village, Its sunny today.
I should contemplate my death more often.
** The Four Right Efforts
1 - Letting go of unwholesome states of mind already present
2 - Resisting engaging with unwholesome states of mind.
3 - Cultivating a more wholesome state of mind
4 - Maintaining a wholesome state of mind.
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