DSC Books: Seven Days: A Journey Into Awareness - Days One to Three

Day Three continued (Section 24)

(Question period.)

Question: (In Spanish) She wants to know what to do when distracted with thoughts of people. She has a lot of thoughts and it becomes primary.

Barbara: We’re going to get into thoughts now. Before we get into thoughts, is there any question about working with physical sensations?

To some extent we have already worked with thought. When there’s a physical sensation, “hearing, hearing,” for example, and then a contraction around it that says, “I don’t like that,” or “I do like it and I want it,” this is one kind of thought. All thoughts have something in common, which is that when you note that you are thinking, it stops. You cannot be noting and planning or thinking of people, or whatever, at the same time.

There is a difference between the physical contractions in the body that accompany the thought and the thought itself. The thought is just a thought. It has its own energy. It’s just a thought. Then my body reacts to the thought in some way or other, a classical example, the good smell, the thought, the vision in the mind of what may be cooking, maybe remembering past experiences, and then the mouth starts salivating.

Each is separate. One is a physical response of the body. One is a thought. If the thought is about a person, remembering, seeing that person in our minds and a thought comes up, “I was supposed to call them and I forgot.” Thinking, thinking. Then, the tension that follows the thought may be guilt or some related emotion. That tension is not the thought. The thought is just the thought. You’ve got to observe closely and it will be clear which is predominant.

Thoughts may run to planning. Next Monday I’m going back to the United States; I may find myself planning what will happen on Monday and Tuesday. I start feeling contracted, “Oh, so much to do.” I find myself sitting and planning a time schedule. “How am I going to get everything done that I have to do on Monday to prepare for my classes on Tuesday?” Noting, “tension, tension.” As soon as I’ve noted the planning, I’m not planning anymore. What is predominant is the tension. I come back to the breath.

If the tension is still there, it’s not the planning. Is it fear that I’ll disappoint people, not live up to expectation? What is it? I can’t give you an answer as to what it is. You don’t even need to label it precisely. All you need to do is note, “tension, tension.” If the tension stays there, stay with it. As it changes or subsides, come back to the breath.

Also note the tension of desire states, as in a memory of a loved one and arising desire to be together.

If there’s no tension in the thought, for example if a thought of a friend comes into your mind, “pleasant, pleasant,” and as you note thinking, and you’re not thinking anymore, you come back to your breath and the thought is gone. It’s just like hearing, hearing, and then it’s gone. There’s no tension about it. It will not be a recurrent thought. If the thought, such as a memory or planning or fantasy is recurrent, it probably will carry tension. If there is tension about the thought, the tension is not the thought itself. Note the thought, come back to the breath. If the tension pulls you away from the breath, then go back to the tension. If it has a special quality, then you can name that quality, like “feeling fear, feeling anger.” If it’s just a tension that’s kind of nameless, just call it “tension, tension.” Sometimes you can find an area of your body that carries the tension and focus there. That can be helpful.

If you see faces, people, you could call it “seeing, seeing,” but as soon as you note it, if that vision is not predominant anymore, come back to your breath. If there’s no tension about it, but the person’s face comes into your mind again, note it again. If it happens twenty times, note it twenty times.

If there is tension, be with the tension. Is the tension around the relationship with that person, something unfinished between you? Tension could even be around wanting mind to be still and not move into seeing. “Self” wants mind to be still. That’s what the tension is.

As long as mind is present with what arises, you’re meditating. There’s a certain quietness which is not found in stifling the mind. Peace does not come by controlling what happens out there. Peace comes with the practice of watching it arise like a wave, and subside, and subside, back into the ocean. And then there’s another wave, and it subsides back into the ocean. There’s no involvement with it.

When I say there’s no involvement with it, I want to be precise here, using this ocean metaphor. If a wave is rising, you see a child on a raft and the wave is about to topple the child, you reach out and steady the child. The wave subsides and your motion ceases. There is no ego involvement in it. We do what we need to do, but we do it from a place of center, not from an ego self. We must respond skillfully to the world.

There’s something I want to read to you that says this very beautifully. This is from Cultivating the Empty Field, by a fifteenth century Chinese zen master, Hongzhi.

The practice of true reality is simply to sit serenely in silent introspection. When you have fathomed this, you cannot be turned around by external causes and conditions. This empty, wide open mind is subtly and correctly illuminating. Spacious and content, without confusion from inner thoughts of grasping, effectively overcome habitual behavior and realize the self that is not possessed by emotions. You must be broad minded, whole … Such upright, independent spirit can begin not to pursue degrading situations. Here you can rest and become clean, pure and lucid. Bright and penetrating, you can immediately return, accord and respond to deal with events.

So, we’re not moving into a place where we separate ourselves from the waves’ rise and fall, but we attend to the waves without any investment in making anything happen. When there’s no repercussion within us, the energy doesn’t contract with, “Did I do that okay?” Ego doesn’t get involved. We just do what needs to be done from an empty place.

Peace is not gained by controlling the waves, but by simply observing their rise and fall from a place that doesn’t have to get involved, but the response goes forth when it needs to. Other questions about how to work with thoughts?

Question: What about daydreaming?

Barbara: Simply label it as “daydreaming” or “fantasizing” or “imagining.” As soon as you label it it’s like a balloon that’s been poked with a pin. Pop! As soon as you know you’re daydreaming, you’re not daydreaming anymore. It may keep returning, but in this moment it’s gone. Come back to the breath. If there’s a tension that wants to hold on to the daydream, it’s not the daydream itself. Can you see the difference? If that tension remains after you come back to the breath, simply label it as “tension, tension” or as “wanting, wanting.”

Question: When you say that thoughts are just thoughts, I don’t understand, because sometimes my thoughts create anger in me, or fear, or pain. (Questioner is crying.)

Barbara: I would like to say here that some of what we’re talking about touches very deep personal places. A Thai meditation master for whom I feel much loving respect, Achaan Cha, is quoted as saying, “If you haven’t cried while meditating, you haven’t really meditated.” The work we’re doing often reconnects us with strong emotions and we cry and feel pain. We may also cry with joy and other emotions. I want everybody in this room to know it’s okay to cry here. You have permission to feel whatever pain you may be feeling.

As to your question, it’s not the thought that creates anger, fear or pain, but our relationship to the content of the thought, which is another kind of thought, a secondary thought. We want so much to be safe; we are so afraid of many of our thoughts. And so we seek to control them.

Thought does have a form to it, an energy. The response to the thought is not the thought itself. If I think of a person who has abused me, if the image of that person or the memory of a scene between us comes into my mind, that is a thought. That image or memory gives rise to a multitude of other thoughts, memories of feeling helpless or victimized, or just the memory of anger in that one situation when I had to face that person and how much I wanted to hurt him back, or how afraid I was of him or of myself. Then there is anger, but the anger is not the image or memory. The anger arises as result of the image or memory and other conditions, all brought together. Along with the image or memory is all the desire to be loved; all the fear that one is not loved, not good enough to be loved; all the vulnerability; all our power and fear of so much power … so many possible ingredients!

Thoughts and actions can both give rise to anger. If I came up now and slapped your face, it might give rise to an array of emotions and sensations out of which anger might come. The slap and the array of feelings about the slap give rise to anger. If you later had a memory of me doing that, it might also give rise to anger.

The slap is just a slap. The thought is just a thought. Memory is just memory. Anger is just anger. But we confuse them until it’s one giant mix that overwhelms us.

The anger or other emotion that arises from the condition, whether that condition was a slap or a thought, is a movement of energy. What happens is through most of our lives, all of this onslaught of contact, sensation, thought, emotion has come so fast that it seemed to be one. It’s like being in the ocean. Each wave, independently, is very workable, but we may feel overwhelmed when waves are coming from all sides. We’ll drown.

With meditation we are slowing down our experience, so we can see just what it is and the kinds of habitual responses we have to it. Then we start to have more freedom, that we don’t have to respond in that habitual way. If you begin to see that a certain kind of thought always serves as the condition for the arising of a certain emotion, you start to understand, “I have a choice here. This thought can lead to this emotion, but maybe it doesn’t have to. What is the emotion about? Is it something in this moment, or is it very old and conditioned by past experience? Is my reaction out of proportion to what’s really happening?”

For example, as you’re meditating, a thought might arise of someone who had stood you up for an appointment. When that happened you felt angry. If somebody doesn’t show up when we expect them, there is anger. In meditation, as the memory comes up, there is remembering. It’s an unpleasant memory. You may have felt rejected or humiliated, or merely inconvenienced. Then energy contracts and anger arises. First we note remembering, and come back to the breath. We feel how solid the anger is. “Anger. Anger.” As you allow yourself to be with that anger, don’t try to do something with the anger, don’t try to get rid of it or change it or judge it. Just be there with it. Judgments may arise such as a thought that the anger is out of proportion to the incident. Just note “judging,” and return to the experiences of anger that are primary in this moment. Don’t analyze it. Just be present, allowing the experience but not feeding it with additional stories.

Then a memory might arise of how when you were a child the people you loved didn’t seem to consider your needs. How angry that child felt when a parent would say, “I’ll help you,” and three hours later they hadn’t come to help. You might feel the helplessness of the child or how the child came to feel unworthy when others seemed to get all of the attention. You might become aware of how impossible it was for the child to express her anger, or how she was criticized when she did express it. This is not feeding the anger but going deeper into it. There is a real difference between, “It’s not fair; it’s never been fair. What a bitch she was; it was her fault,” and the deep awareness of pain which may come without words, just a shudder in the body or tears. No one needs to be blamed. It was just a heartbreaking situation, often a repeated one. Can we open our hearts to ourselves and our pain here? This is the doorway, allowing us also to find compassion for the others who were involved. Instead of “the bitch,” we may suddenly see another human trapped by her own fear. That doesn’t condone what she did, but the heart begins to soften.

So, we start to see what the ingredients are in our anger. We don’t have to look back at childhood and say, “This is because of that.” This anger is because of ten thousand “thats.” We don’t have to see all of it. It’s enough to just know, “This is old. A part of the tension I’m feeling is coming from so much old conditioning. Can I let myself come back to what is happening in this moment? Right now there’s just the memory of the friend that didn’t show up, my anger and all my judgments about my anger, my guilt, my discomfort, my wanting to blame someone, my wanting to be free of my anger; that’s all that’s here. Can I just be with it?”

As another example, perhaps you see a friend talking to another person and jealousy arises. Jealousy is a form of anger. The jealousy is intense. You can’t just say, “I shouldn’t feel jealous.” The best that will do is to suppress it. When you notice the entire chain of events, that you were talking to your friend and then another person came and diverted her, and then jealousy arose, if you give all of that the space it needs, you may have a memory of how a sibling always intruded when you were talking to a parent. Perhaps you were always told, “You’re the older one; you should let your sister talk.” Perhaps you were scolded for displaying anger. This person who interrupted is not just this person but your sibling and all of those painful old situations.

Or perhaps no memory arises, just an intuitive sense that this present jealousy has old roots that enhance the present pain. We don’t have to see the origins to know that we have had myriad painful experiences and moved to defend ourselves.

However it came, in this moment there is anger. It’s there even after you remember how painful the sibling interruptions were, how unfair it seemed. You can’t say, “I shouldn’t be angry because this is just old conditioning.” There is anger. The old anger enhances the new and it all needs to be dealt with. The first step is to acknowledge it and allow the experience of it without the telling of old stories that fuel it. In this moment there is no sibling. There is just the feeling that a friend has deserted you and the pain of that desertion. Without melodrama and blame, without enhancement, we acknowledge the situation and the pain. This, we say, gives it space.

You find that when you’re with it just like that, and there gets to be a much bigger space around it, then it’s much easier. Let me give you a metaphor. If I asked you to sit in a small box, and when you were sitting I took a tarantula and put it in the box with you, it would be very hard to sit there. If we took a bigger box and I put the tarantula in the far side, it would still be very difficult. If we took a space the size of this room and I put the tarantula on the floor, way over in the corner, and asked you to sit there, told you you could move if you needed to, you would find that you could watch it and you could sit. There’s space for both of you. If it starts to walk toward you, you can get up and move. There’s space to be with it.

This is what we’re doing with our anger or other emotions. By just being present with them and seeing what they really are, there is space. Now, if someone put the tarantula right here in a little box, I’d scream and jump out. If it were across the room and I watched it crawling towards me and five or six times I got up and moved, eventually I might feel, “I’m just going to sit here and let it approach me. Maybe I don’t have to be afraid of it. What is this tarantula? Can I let it crawl on me?” I have never touched one, but people tell me that they are very gentle and shy. Could I let it sit on my hand? Could I let myself become that intimate with it?

We become intimate with our emotions in that way. We can’t become intimate with them when we feel crushed by them, because we feel that we need to flee from them. When we feel like we have space, then we can consider becoming more intimate with them. And then, we find that they’re not really solid, that we don’t have to be afraid of them.

So, this is how the process works. Does that answer your question?