Most of the time we don’t see our life questions as an opportunity for practice; we see them as personal problems that need to be fixed or controlled. Our tendency then, of course, is to try to get rid of these problems. We are always trying to figure things out, which is often a way of avoiding being present with the question. Although taking time to reflect on important life questions is essential, this intellectual inquiry isn’t enough. In fact, trying to find out what needs to change so that it won’t happen again can be a form of aversion. Real transformation arises from nonverbal attention. When we are fully present and able to pay attention in a sustained way to our experience we can begin to see directly, uncolored by our ideas and concepts. Placing our trust more in loving attention and less in analyzing the story can allow space for a new way of holding the question. But this trust does not come easily and takes practice. Sometimes we worry a question to death. We give it too much attention and ignore other aspects of life. When this happens it is often a sign that we are too attached to finding an answer. Instead of narrowly focusing on finding an answer or on resolving the problem we need to examine our process of investigation itself. When we examine our approach to problem-solving in life, do we find that we are usually looking outside ourselves for the answer? Unfortunately, always looking outside ourselves keeps us from understanding more deeply the nature of our suffering. For example, we may find ourselves continually disappointed in relationships with others. We blame others and want them to change. Instead, can we calmly observe the feelings of disappointment and begin to look at our expectations? Can we turn the investigation toward our feelings of resentment and disappointment instead of being attached to others acting in a certain way? When we are willing to investigate, with loving attention, the difficult feelings that come up in relationship to others, our happiness or unhappiness is less conditioned by how others behave. When we are in touch with actual experience, the way it is without any interpretation, our investigation becomes quite direct and we begin to see underlying truths. We can begin to see the changing nature of all experiences, whether painful or pleasant. This understanding of the changing nature of all experience leads to a fearlessness and willingness to face difficulties more openheartedly. We are sometimes afraid to feel certain painful emotions because we don’t think they will change. But through paying attention when we are in pain, instead of trying to avoid the pain, quite naturally the truth of change is revealed. Instead of clinging to changing pleasant experiences, we open to them fully, yet we continue to pay attention and we see them change and we let go. This investigation and seeing of change leads to the freedom of equanimity. When we are willing to hold our life questions as mysteries rather than as problems that have to be fixed or solved, we become more comfortable with the creative energy of not knowing. With this particular approach to life questions one has to learn patience and discover faith. When I was a child I experienced intense fear at night. I would ask myself, “Am I afraid of something that is outside of me or something that is inside of me?” This particular question about the nature of fear continued to be my koan for years. Though I can’t say why or how, I do know that this specific fear has dissolved over time. I never found an answer to this question, but in the open space of questioning and not knowing, something that seemed at the time to be very solid and overwhelming dissipated. When our assumptions of what is true turn, instead, to questioning through openhearted attention, then other possibilities arise. Freshness enters in, and with that freshness freedom is possible. A man is hit in the chest by an arrow and collapses. Gravely wounded, he is on the brink of death, so a doctor is summoned to remove the arrowhead. But the man will not let him do this. First, he wants to know from what kind of wood the arrow shaft is made: then he wants to find out what sort of poison had been put on its tip; and what kind of feathers were attached to its end; were they goose feathers or hawk feathers? He wants to know what the arrowhead is made of, and who shot the arrow at him, and from what distance, and why? Naturally, by the time he finds all that out he dies. The story [from the Culamalunkya Sutta—Ed.] represents our tendency to ask questions about all sorts of important details instead of practicing those things that will lead us out of dukkha. —Ayya Khema, Who Is My Self? Narayan Liebenson Grady is a guiding teacher at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, where she has taught since 1985. She is the author of When Singing, Just Singing: Life As Meditation.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 05:11:18 +0000
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