From Suffering to Peace

by Mark Coleman

  The real question is, how do we respond to such disappointment? Often we complain or feel dissed, and we hunger for more. Sometimes, we don’t even wait for the pleasurable activity to end: as we eat ice cream or enjoy a sunset, we sense its demise and start chasing the next pleasure. However sublime a conversation or a concert is, if it goes on for hours, our interest generally wanes and we start to muse on what’s next. Relationships are not spared. They often begin with a passionate honeymoon phase, but as we all know, the honeymoon high rarely sustains itself. Given this reality, how do we step off the wheel of relentlessly reaching for more?

  By discerning how no experience can provide lasting satisfaction, we stop expecting that some experience might. We unhook from the painful tendency to grasp for the next shiny thing, and we learn to meet each experience as it is, without clinging or holding on. We simply enjoy each moment while it is here, and for what it is, not looking for or demanding more. This can bring a huge sense of relief.

  However, just because we cultivate mindfulness, we don’t suddenly stop seeking pleasant experiences. But we can understand that such pleasures are transient by nature, and wisdom can help keep us from seeking happiness in the wrong places or demanding lasting fulfillment from things that can’t provide it. We abide in a middle way between indulgence and rejection. We appreciate when beauty and pleasure arrive and remain untroubled and not disappointed when such moments pass.

  The Buddha, in his insight, spoke to the deeper layers of dissatisfaction in the human condition: being alive means we must inevitably confront the hard realities of aging, sickness, and death. In addition, he said, life involves a triumvirate of challenges: (1) not getting what you want; (2) losing what you have; and (3) being separated from what you love. These painful situations run through the veins of life, and however blessed our life may be, we will have to face such difficulties.

  The point isn’t to avoid being deprived of what we want nor to prevent losing what we love, since these things happen to everyone. The question is how do we relate to these vexing challenges when they occur? As Professor Randy Pausch spoke about in his book The Last Lecture: “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” This is what determines our well-being more than the particular circumstances or challenges we face.

  For example, Aishin, a mindfulness student in her thirties from the San Francisco Bay Area, attended my nature meditation teacher training. She is a living example to me of how one learns to skillfully and eloquently play a challenging hand. In her teens she came down with a very painful joint condition, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, that made every physical movement a challenge. It literally hurt to move, walk, sit, and even lie down. Upon waking, pain wracked her body, and it didn’t let up until she fell asleep. She came to meditation desperate for some relief, but it did not deliver in the way she hoped. Meditation did not make the joint cramps go away. However, she learned important skills that helped her navigate the adversity.

  Drawing on her mindfulness practice, Aishin began to shift her harsh attitude and judgment toward the pain. She saw how contracting against the pain just created more tension. Instead, she learned to meet her searing sensations with a kinder attention, which allowed some ease in relation to the discomfort. In addition, she realized she was not beholden to always attend to the pain. The freedom of awareness, she discovered, allowed her to direct attention in ways that created a sense of ease or space. This is an essential skill when pain is your constant companion. Making peace with the condition of her body enabled her to find peace in her heart, despite the burden.

  Not only does life teach us that we can’t always get what we want, but life can also give us what we don’t want. Most of the time these are temporary problems, but not always. No one wants their child to bring home head lice from school or catch a cold; no one wants to hit traffic on the way to work. More seriously, nobody wishes to contract a degenerative illness or lose their youthful vigor or vitality. No one desires to lose their job, their house to a fire, or their savings to an economic downturn. No one wants to live in constant pain or to die, and life can often seem random and cruel when it challenges us with these things. Yet such adversity is simply part of the human predicament.

  What can we do? We can, and sometimes do, collapse in self-pity, rage against God, or blame ourselves. However, we can also learn to adapt and embrace such conditions with kind presence and self-compassion. Not only can mindfulness help us meet and accept our difficulties, but it helps us have compassion for ourselves when acceptance is hard, when we fail or struggle to find a skillful response. We can’t take misfortune away, which comes with the territory of being human. Loss is part of the harsh fabric of life. But through practice we can learn to navigate this terrain, to meet challenges as they arrive, to not take them personally, and to avoid judging ourselves for doing something wrong. As we mature, we can learn to meet loss and change with tenderness and surrender and find an ease with it all that we didn’t think was possible.

  • PRACTICE •

  Understanding Dissatisfaction

  Contemplating what is unsatisfying is not a popular pastime. However, doing so can be remarkably fruitful. As you begin any activity, like taking a walk, eating dinner, or exercising, bring awareness to whatever is pleasurable about the experience. Then notice how your experience of it changes. Become curious about the entire process — about the complexity of whatever you enjoy, and how any delightful experience has a beginning, middle, and end.

  For example, when you eat, fully enjoy what is delicious about your meal, and then consider how you feel when your plate is empty. Are you satisfied or disappointed? Do you long for more? If we follow that longing, we could make ourselves sick by overeating. The body reminds us to stay in balance, even though our mind often overrides that sensation, such as when we eat too many chocolates! By bringing awareness to the fleeting aspect of simple pleasures, we can discover how we relate to all experience. That pleasure is temporary is no reason not to enjoy it. However, why let enjoyment, simply because it’s temporary, lead to dissatisfaction, stress, and suffering?

  Just as pleasure has its unsatisfactory side, so too does every other human experience. Bring this same awareness to any moment of gratification. Be curious about your own reactions when life is flourishing. Can you simply enjoy it, or do you anticipate its ending and so become anxious or restless and undermine your own positive experience? Be aware even in times of contentment how easy it is to feel an itch of doubt or discontent. Can you recognize that dissatisfaction within even the greatest of experiences, with the awareness that it is a natural part of human experience? As we explore our experience in this way, we come to hold things and experience more lightly, neither demanding that they continue nor fretting when the highs begin to change and fade.

  • • •

  Chapter 16

  Learning the Wisdom of Letting Go

  To let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own.

  — JACK KORNFIELD

  Letting go, the process of not holding on, is an important facet of mindfulness practice and a key determinant in our well-being. It is the potential for how we can relate to each moment’s experience without contention or trying to grab or control it. As soon as we grasp something, it’s as if we strangle it. That is particularly true if we cling to another person or to something that will inevitably fade. A cause of so much of our anguish is this tendency to grasp after, hold on to, or reject experience. This leads to an endless struggle with what is and leaves us perennially ill at ease.

  However, this habit is deep-rooted. My friend Leslie told me a story recently that points to how grasping starts when we are very young. Learning to let go can also start at an early age as well. Leslie wrote to me about her three-year-old son:

  Kiko’s morning meltdown today was because he made up his mind that he wanted syrupy waffles. My “no” and offering of oatmeal wit
h honey and a few rainbow sprinkles led to a good fifteen-minute cry. He was so stuck on the idea of syrup that he couldn’t relax enough to hear me explain that he could have a waffle after he ate his oatmeal. He’d calm down for a few seconds and look at the oatmeal just long enough to tell me how it was too bumpy or not bumpy enough. Eventually, he found a book he wanted me to read to him at the table and calmed down enough to actually enjoy the sprinkles on his oats. While his three-year-old tendency to freak out over whatever it is he wants in that moment can be challenging, thankfully it’s matched by his ability to just let it go as soon as something else shiny catches his attention.

  Fortunately, we are not simply victims to this process. We can shift our response depending upon how we view each experience. Marcus Aurelius, the Roman philosopher and emperor, put it this way: “If you are distressed by anything external [or internal], the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” This is as true now as it was two thousand years ago.

  What is remarkable about human beings is their ability to express this principle no matter how wretched the circumstances. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl wrote about his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. He observed how even in the most despicable of conditions, people still had the power to decide how they related to what was happening. He wrote: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Having choice over one’s attitude or relationship to experience is the potential of what mindfulness practice offers. It is the doorway to liberty.

  I recall talking to a spiritual teacher in India who had been held as a prisoner of war in a brutal internment camp in Japan during World War II. He said one of his daily tasks was to be lowered into a septic tank full of human feces, shoulder-high, and to empty the tank out with a bucket. The stench, heat, and revulsion almost overwhelmed him. Yet deep in his psyche, he found the space of awareness that could hold and even transcend the toxic horror of that situation. He described how hard it was to find inner resources to face that challenge day after day. Yet the pressure of the situation birthed a realization that awareness contained within it the power to hold any experience. Despite how wretched those circumstances were, he was able to access a presence that was unperturbed and free, neither caught in reaction nor grasping for something other, even amid that noxious environment. That is letting go on a profound level!

  Thankfully, we don’t have to experience such extremes to discover this. We explore this in our meditation practice and in our life on a daily basis. Ajahn Chah, a renowned Thai meditation master, once said: “If you want a little peace, let go a little. If you want a lot of peace, let go a lot. If you want complete peace, then let go completely.” That instruction is quite simple. However, like many things regarding mindfulness practice, it is hard to accomplish that level of release.

  I often smile wryly when I hear the sometimes glib, co-opted New Age advice to “just let go” in response to some hardship or struggle. For example, someone may be advised to “just let go” of their fear, struggle, grief, or loss, whether they are gripped in white-knuckle panic during a turbulent flight or mourning the death of a loved one. Well-meaning people say, “If you would only let go, you could be free from pain.”

  The obvious response to this is: “If I could let go, I would.” It is when we can’t let go of a feeling, thought, or reactive state that the real work begins. Of course, many reactions and thoughts can be released. We can at times recognize the futility of speculative worry and put aside those thoughts. We can see our frustration at rush-hour traffic and put it down by listening to the radio or taking some deeper breaths. But at other times, “just letting go” is not possible in the moment. For example, when we are gripped by grief, heartbreak, and loss, “letting go” of our emotions is not only implausible but often not healthy. What is required is to feel fully those painful feelings and allow them to unfold and release over time.

  In this case, letting go happens through the process of letting be. The grieving process takes time and is a necessary part of healing. We can’t rush the tears, nor can we skip them. With grief and other powerful emotions, “just letting go” and trying to move on too quickly can be a type of avoidance, denial, or “spiritual bypass.” Wise mindfulness is the ability to meet ourselves as we are, with patient, tender awareness, and allow the sadness, tears, and all. It is only by surrendering to grief and heartbreak that we eventually come to resolution with loss. Through that process, we can find peace by not fighting, by not resisting or thinking our experience should be different or our emotions should be over.

  Laurie shared with me her story of learning to let go during her dog’s death:

  Through my practice I was able to support my beloved poodle, Peanut, through her transition without my own grief and attachment interfering. The dread of imagining my life without her initially thwarted my ability to feel the deep sadness in the moment, as well as the intense love and growing tenderness that I felt for Peanut, who became more dear to me in her final days than I ever could have imagined. Instead of avoiding the painful reality of her loss, I opened myself to the experience. I began to notice how fleeting each emotion was. Amidst the tremendous feelings of loss were moments of bliss with just being with her in her final moments. Peanut’s death and dying was one of the most beautiful and painful experiences of my life, one that was held in equanimity through my awareness of each precious moment.

  The practice of letting be also applies to being with physical discomfort. I have, like many people, been afflicted over the years with chronic lower back pain. Sometimes it is worse than others. But it has also been a great teacher. Pain acts like a mirror. When I wince and contract around the spasms, it is as if my body condenses into a knot of hardness. This contraction seems like a natural reaction, but it just intensifies the sensations. The suffering worsens when I resist, judge, and fight, or if I collapse into self-pity or feel like a victim.

  When I can meet back spasms with spacious awareness, I don’t resist or avoid feeling the pain, twinge, cramp, or piercing sensations. I notice it is unpleasant, and I acknowledge that I really don’t want it or like it. Acknowledging both the experience and my grumblings about it helps access a sense of ease, even though the difficulty remains. As I’ve said before, it’s not what happens that defines us, but how we relate to it.

  Mindfulness helps us both illuminate our reactivity and recognize just how painful that activated state is. This provides the impetus to release the grip of whatever we are consumed by. We all get reactive, but we don’t always realize how unhappy it makes us. For instance, I have a friend in LA who loves to drive but hates “bad” drivers. As we drive, if he gets stuck behind a slow driver, he frequently has a tantrum, exclaiming about how terrible their driving is and describing everything they are doing wrong. My friend erupts in such hostility you would think the person had delivered a personal insult. These tirades are amusing from a distance, but they are consuming and painful when we are caught up in them. My friend is not alone in this. I know others who get similarly riled up watching a football game or when someone takes their parking place or expresses a different political opinion.

  We can all get upset and reactive, whether about the smallest of things or over deeply important matters. It all depends on the strength of our attachment in the moment. However, it is important to remember that simply letting go, or nongrasping, does not mean passivity. We can care deeply about the world and act to change what needs improving, such as working to relieve the suffering of others and helping to end injustice, poverty, and racism. We can respond to problems in life that cause pain, not with blinkered, knee-jerk reactivity, but with passionate engagement and a compassionate desire to help. It is the space of letting go that frees us up to respond more effectively to such things.

  • PRACTICE •

&n
bsp; The Practice of Letting Go

  In meditation, the habit of grasping and holding on can be as pervasive as in life, though more insidious. Begin your meditation by turning awareness to your body. As you establish a healthy posture, be aware if there is a twinge of grasping, of wanting your posture to be more comfortable than it is. Notice if there is a trace of the fixing mind state that is rarely content no matter how perfect your posture is. See if you can simply be with your physical experience, whatever it is like.

  In the same way, bring attention to breathing. Breathe naturally, allowing the breath to find its own rhythm, to breathe itself. Then notice any subtle or not-so-subtle attempts to control, change, or manipulate the breath to your liking. Are you trying, for example, to have a different, longer, deeper, calmer breath? Notice any grasping, such as wanting or demanding that the breath be a certain way.

  Attending to the breath is a barometer for how we control or grasp even the smallest thing. Does what you observe in how you try to control or subtly change your breath relate, or not, to any similar impulse to control your thoughts, your spouse, your work, your children, or your environment? Notice without judgment the deep-rooted habit of grasping in yourself. Nonjudgmental awareness allows us to disengage and create some space in which to release the pattern. When you notice the grip around your breath, you can shift your attention elsewhere, to sounds or other parts of the body, which can allow any subtle urge to control to naturally release.

  Next, observe any grasping or reactivity in relation to your emotions. In meditation and in life, we often try to hold on to pleasurable states and reject uncomfortable ones. Is this true right now? Do you clutch after bliss, peace, calm, or joy, and are you pushing away or rejecting fear, loss, or other more challenging emotions? Both are reactive movements toward or away from experience. Either impulse can create inner tension, or conflict with what is actually happening, and leave us restless and discontent.