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Illusory Flowers In An Empty Sky

Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Arriving Where You Are

To meet disaster at the time of disaster is fine just as it is

To meet illness at the time of illness is fine just as it is
To meet death at the time of death is fine just as it is
-Ryokan

Do not choose a coward's explanation

That hides behind the cause and the effect.
- Leonard Cohen

Not many people are happy.

Often, when I ask a person, "Are you happy?", they respond by telling me how good their life is,
by which they mean how many material things they have, or what they've accomplished in the
view of other people, or how much pleasure they have. When I ask again, "Yes, but are you
happy?", the answer is usually no. And, most of the time, I don't ask at all, because I don't have
to.

So many of us spend our lives grasping, seeking pleasure, confusing it with happiness. Pleasure
and happiness are unrelated. Pleasure and satisfaction are just prettied-up manifestations of pain
and dissatisfaction. As soon as you get what you want - a job, a relationship, whatever - you
worry about how to keep it, and you fear losing it. As soon as you feel satisfied, you worry about
maintaining it, and you fear losing it - and so you have immediately lost it. Pleasure reveals itself
to be pain, and satisfaction reveals itself to be frustration and fear.

The Buddha's First Noble Truth is often translated as "There is suffering." But the Pali word for
suffering, dukkha, has a more subtle meaning. Dukkha is an all-pervasive lack of contentment, a
constant underlying feeling that something is missing.
What's missing? Peace. Happiness. We feel the lack, even when life is supposedly going well. In
the search for what's missing, people indulge in stupid, cowardly, addictive behavior - drugs,
codependent relationships, anything to avoid staying still and facing the self. People live lives of
perpetual distraction (I'm amazed every day at how many people's conversations and blogs are
about what they watch on TV), the lives of hungry ghosts, constantly feeding their greedy egos,
and always remaining hungry.

They think, "I'll be happy when..." When I move to another city. When I get a different job. When
I get married. When I get divorced. When I lose weight. When I gain weight. When I write a
book. When I get rich. When...

And if the when arrives, and they get what they want, there's still no peace. So they move right
along to the next obsession.

I see so many people in lonely, alienated relationships - because they never actually get to know
the person they're involved with. Constantly searching for someone to save them, to make them
happy, to bring them peace and contentment, they tell themselves a romantic, idealized story
about every attractive person they meet, and are too busy projecting their narcissistic fantasy on
to the other person to actually get to know them. So, when the other person turns out to be
different than the fantasy - "when it becomes real," as a friend of mine who does this sort of
thing puts it - they're angry and disappointed, and move on to the next fantasy, often leaving the
person they were dating wondering what happened.

Our institutions encourage childish narcissism. Consider the marriage vows. They are, by their
very definition, impossible to keep, because they assume permanence, and we don't live in a
universe of permanence. To make a lifetime pledge is to be deluded or dishonest, because,
moment to moment and day to day, everything changes. This is not to say that a couple can't or
shouldn't stay together for life - but they won't be the same people who took the vows, and they
won't feel the same way.

I once told a brother monk that when people ask me if I'll practice Zen for the rest of my life, I
answer that if I said yes I wouldn't be practicing Zen right now - because nothing is static and
there is no constant, permanent self that I can declare will always practice Zen. Even though I
can't conceive of ever not doing this, the only honest answer to that question, and any such
question, is: I don't know. Everything changes.

For as long as a person seeks permanence and security, they are in dukkha. For as long as a
person confuses love with attachment, their relationships are fictions. When you think your
happiness comes from another person, you attach to them - and when you attach to someone or
something, you try to control them. Real intimacy is found in letting go and in not knowing, in
practicing not knowing and being comfortable in not knowing.

The thing that people search for, that they think is missing, is always there. It's our own perfect,
enlightened nature, and, if we practice finding the still point, sitting in lucid awareness, we
experience "bliss outside of time, pure freedom from self," as the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo says.
We realize that our lack of peace comes from our belief in a hallucination - the self, the hungry
ghost we devote our lives to trying to feed.

See through the self, and the happiness is always there. It was there before you were born. It will
be there after you die. It came from nowhere and will go nowhere. It wasn't created and it can't
be destroyed. It can be realized or ignored - and most of us ignore it.

Posted by Dogo Barry Graham at 4:43 AM

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Labels: attachment, impermanence, life, peace, practice, samsara, suffering, zen

3 comments:

sharanam said...
"Real intimacy is found in letting go and in not knowing, in practicing not knowing and being
comfortable in not knowing."

Yes. Thank you.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010 6:44:00 AM MST

kitano0 said...
One of your best posts!

Thank you.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010 1:50:00 PM MST

Scott Proper said...

Excellent

Tuesday, October 5, 2010 7:12:00 PM MST

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"The awesome Barry Graham" - American Book Review

Dogo Barry Graham

Author, journalist and Zen teacher. Native of Glasgow, Scotland, now based in Phoenix, Arizona.
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