Category Archives: delusion

A Triad of Collusion

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toxic-symbol-3-poisonsWe have been looking at the Three Poisons, the patterns of reactivity that we humans tend to fall into, thus losing our ability to be awake to this moment. While the Poisons of aversion/hatred and greed/craving are fairly obvious to notice, it is much harder to tell when we are experiencing delusion. As I write this, outside my window is a thick January ground fog. How appropriate! Delusion masks the lay of the land. In class, during meditation, I heard fog horns out in the Bay. It could have been someone’s cell phone on vibrate instead of mute, but it sounded like a fog horn. Either way, it made me realize that as we investigate and discover delusion in our experience, we are a bit like ship captains recognizing fog, sounding our fog horns.

But with delusion, more often than not we don’t recognize the fog we are in as fog at all. If it’s a lifelong delusion, how could we know we’re in it? If someone told us we wouldn’t believe them. It is easier for us to see when someone else is walking around in a cloud of delusion. Can we cultivate compassion and understanding for them? When we are able to do that we discover that whatever aversion we may have had for them softens. We’re not buying into their myopic view, but we can feel compassion for them as fellow beings caught up in the suffering of delusion.

Once we have begun to recognize delusion in others, we can gently open to the possibility of the existence of delusion in our own experience. It’s tricky, but having extended compassion to someone else, we have the capacity to extend it to ourselves, allowing us to see delusion without aversion blocking our way. 

Delusion is manufactured and supported by the other two Poisons of greed and aversion. And in turn, delusion provides a blindness that is necessary to sustain craving and hatred.

Say, for example, as I am passing by an ice cream shop, craving arises. Delusion rushes to that craving’s aid by whispering very selective pieces of information, like how much protein there is in ice cream, or the memory of how as a child ice cream was a reward and a sign of parental affection, etc., and so I find myself standing at the counter reaching for that cone.

But before I can enjoy it, maybe aversion rushes in — shame on me, I’m so weak, etc. — supported by more selective bits of information about how much sugar and calories are in this cone, how fat I am, how people will be judging me, making the cone feel like a handful of embarrassment instead of a simple pleasure. Of course with all this going on, there’s not much room for being present with the experience of tasting and enjoying the flavor, texture, coldness, etc. so that I end up feeling both guilty and unsatisfied.

Whether or not you relate to this particular example, you can no doubt find other examples that show how the three Poisons support each other in what we might call a triad of collusion.

There are many more facets to delusion than just providing cover and shame in the purchase of an ice cream cone. There is a difficulty in seeing things as they are and a willingness to buy into stories that under analysis make no sense. These stories can be part of our family mythology that feel like the bond that holds family together. If you think about your family, notice if there are any unspoken agreements about how to explain uncomfortable things. You might think of it as the oil that makes the machinery of family run more smoothly. The story may have begun with the best of intentions, a white lie to avoid hurting people’s feelings or sharing what might be considered shameful truths. But the acceptance and solidifying of the lie into the family story is delusion in action, supported by the two other poisons: craving normalcy and hating to be seen as abnormal or immoral, etc. In class I shared a story from my own family, which is not for sharing on the internet, but it was a good example of the delusion of family mythology.

Our collective cultural mythology is supported by propaganda and our desire to be a part of something positive and powerful, not something subject to human failings. It’s frighteningly easy to prey on our human desires and aversions by fueling it with resonate selective truths or total fabrications. We can be suckers for persuasion if it plays into what we want to believe is true. Facts be damned! Again, it’s much easier to see how ‘the other side’ is delusional. The idea of there being sides may be the biggest delusion of all. Who knows?

Our ongoing investigation is asking, ‘How can I be in skillful compassionate relationship with this?’ When it comes to a body of information, especially the complex intricacies of the family mythology, perhaps the most skillful compassionate way is to acknowledge that we don’t know.

If the story is harming us, it’s worth investigating, getting beyond delusion. This is certainly the case in sustaining a viable democracy. Whether a bit of familial folklore is actually causing harm is debatable. But in either case, it’s skillful to recognize that we don’t know the whole truth. We can see how we have the tendency to cling to what we want to believe, and the tendency to believe anything negative about anyone we don’t like.

Can we see that our happiness is not dependent on any story being true or false? Whether it’s about ourselves, our family or our country, can we acknowledge that we don’t know everything? Can we be open to other views and new facts we hadn’t previously known? This kind of open exploration doesn’t threaten us. Our identity is not built on what we believe to be true being true! We can find a wonderful richness in being able to relax our stranglehold on our precious truths. We can hold them in an open embrace, look at them with a more discerning eye, and know that they do not define us.

‘I don’t know’ is a powerful liberating phrase. Once on a retreat I spent a whole day discovering the proverbial tip of the iceberg of all the things I don’t know, and seeing my assumptions of knowing fall by the wayside. For example, I was doing walking meditation across a patio of concrete squares, and there were some things I took for granted that I knew about them, but there was so much more that I didn’t know — how thick they were, what was under them, who laid them, where the material came from, etc. etc.

I looked at trees this way and discovered that my ‘knowledge’ about any given tree is only what I’ve been told or have learned from seeing fallen trees with innards exposed, but in fact I know very little about any particular tree — what all is going on inside, what life forms reside there, where the roots actually run underground, etc. The more I investigated, the more I realized I don’t know.

And that was a joyous recognition. Because there’s no way to know everything and I could let go of the presumption of knowing and the need to accumulate knowledge as if there will be a test. I can explore the world following whatever veins interest me, and learn as much or as little as I please, and no matter how much I learn, even about subjects I study in depth, there will always be lots of room for acknowledging that I don’t know, that the information I received is incomplete or misleading. Making room for that possibility, that likelihood, freed me from feeling incomplete for not knowing everything.

So joyful a discovery was this that I wrote a note to my teacher and pinned it on the board saying simply ‘I don’t know!!!’ A few hours later a note appeared on the board with my name on it and inside was her reply: ‘Yay!!!!’

Consider how, if you’ve ever looked through a microscope, you might have been astounded by the worlds within the world we think we know. The world as we know it is totally based on the lens of our own perceptions through senses that, while amazing, are quite limited. The more we know, the more we know we don’t know! So we stop assuming we do. Yay!

‘I don’t know’ may on the face of it seem like a delusional state, but it is not the dulled down ‘duh’ of delusion. Instead it is a sense of awakening to the interconnected complexity of all life’s systems, networks, patterns, infinitesimal to infinite space, all in a constant state of flux, expansion and contraction, in cycles of birth, growth, death, decay that nourishes new life. I am, you are, we all are, a part of all this, and for me that is more than enough to know! Even as I thirst for knowledge, it is enjoying the process of investigation rather than the idea of accumulation and becoming a walking encyclopedia of indisputable truths.

Sensing the infinite and interconnected complexity of life, perhaps we can relax our misguided efforts to be separate from it. We can let go of our need to stand out in a crowd in order to be admired or loved. Each of us is an intrinsic part of it all, radiating and receiving in every moment, a living breathing-thinking-feeling floating, ever-changing field of aliveness we call ‘me’. Whee!

Is it true?

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Byron Katie is a popular author and teacher beloved by the Buddhist community for her wise way of challenging delusion, one of the ‘three poisons’ (The other two are greed and aversion). While she has written many books and given lots of workshops for adults, it is the children’s book, Tiger Tiger, Is It True? I bought for my granddaughters that for me most clearly illustrates how the things we tell ourselves are making us unhappy.

tiger-tigerIn the introductory note to parents, Katie says that people always want to change the world so they can be happy. But they have it backward. She recommends changing the projector – the mind – rather than trying to change what’s projected. She uses the example of a piece of lint on the lens of a film projector. Nothing you can do on the screen will remedy that. Imagine someone at the front of the theater using all kinds of cleaners to scrub the screen clean — how frustrating! The projector just keeps on projecting the shadows of the lint on the lens onto the screen.
When the mind is projecting shadows, we function in a state of delusion, relying on this misinformation we are projecting. So it’s important to look closely at the nature of our thoughts and to question whether what we assume about everything is actually true.
A few weeks ago we looked at other people’s delusions as an entry point into noticing our own. As we think about a family member, friend, person in the news or character in a novel; does it become easier to recognize some false idea they are clinging to? Some assumption they are operating under that keeps landing them in unpleasant circumstances? If you find yourself thinking, ‘Yeah, keep telling yourself that.’ then you know you are looking at an example of delusion.
After looking at other people’s delusions, hopefully we are better able to develop a compassionate way of seeing them. Then we can turn the light of that understanding onto our own patterns of thought and emotion as they arise. We can begin to notice and investigate what we accept as true without question.
It may feel threatening to question our own long-held beliefs. Why? Because we have built solid-seeming identities out of these beliefs. It may be difficult to imagine who we would be without these beliefs. When I say ‘beliefs’ I am not necessarily talking about ideas, philosophies or religion. Many of our deepest beliefs are simply about ourselves, how fundamentally flawed we are in a variety of ways. We may believe ourselves to be incapable of certain things — speaking in front of a crowd, for example; or bad at things, say sports, or good at things, like maybe cooking. We may get into comparing mind around these things and feel all kinds of uncomfortable emotions. Who would we be without defining ourselves in this way? These are just mental formations. They are not who we are! How would life be without that persistent pattern of thinking that keeps making us miserable?
Being able to recognize delusion is a vital skill, enabling us to awaken.

mkondoSpeaking of wise women who share their gifts with the world, Marie Kondo now has a series on Netflix called ‘Tidying Up’. I wrote about her book almost three years ago, and have been following her recommendations ever since. Now with this series we can see her in person and delight in her very meditative and compassionate way of coming into skillful relationship with our stuff. Whether you’re already a fan or just need help organizing in a way that is compatible with your practice, tune in to her series or read her book.

Clock Time :: Both convenience and delusion

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clock-new-yearsWe are beginning our exploration of Delusion, one of The Three Poisons that keep us from awakening. (The other two are Greed and Aversion.) As we count down to midnight on New Year’s Eve, the concept of calendar and clock time seems a perfect place to start our investigation — not because we are beginning a new topic, but because calendar/clock time is a kind of delusion! Wha??? Why? Consider that time is a convenient agreement we made as a human community, an agreement we rely on. How would we have meetings and travel on planes and trains without it? But it is just an agreement. When we take it to be absolute reality, that’s a powerful delusion that doesn’t serve us.

The natural world of which we are an intrinsic part is all rhythms, cycles, seasons, circular patterns of arising and falling away — all of which, if we pay attention, teach us about the nature of impermanence and the interconnectedness of all life. This deep understanding is key to awakening.

But in our culture we distract ourselves with a made up system of linear time. Instead of appreciating it for the convenience it provides, we perceive it as a solid reality, as if we are all on this timeline that stretches into the distant past and distant future. Does it run left to right? right to left? up or down? Stop and think for a moment how you perceive your own timeline and world history.

Calendar and clock time were never meant to supersede nature’s rhythms. But it has done just that for so many of us, fostering a forgetfulness of our intrinsic nature. We have come to see ourselves as separate from the rest of nature, operating on a totally different wavelength. Of course this varies to a great degree, person to person and culture to culture. But for most of us it takes effort to stay connected, doesn’t it? It takes a conscious choice to give ourselves the gift of our own natural rhythms that our ancestors took for granted. Otherwise we succumb to the easy effortless drone of the distinctly human construct of the clock and calendar time world we have co-created. Can we appreciate the great gift of what we have created without falling for the delusion that it is reality?

If we can’t see through that delusion, we set ourselves up to be shocked when the natural way of things makes itself known to us. How resistant we are to the rhythms of nature, whether it’s the seasons coming and going or our own very natural mortality.

Clever as we are, we create workarounds like electric lighting to extend daylight into the night, reinforcing our feeling of being apart from and impervious to nature. Our scientists work to extend our lives because we can’t face the thought of aging and dying, making room for generations to come.

So as we approach the ‘New Year’, if we believe it is real, we vest it with almost magical powers. Resolutions are only for the New Year. Say you make a resolution to start eating healthier or exercising more in the coming year. Doesn’t that set you up for gobbling up the chocolate cake and being a couch potato up until the stroke of midnight on December 31st?

And if on January 2nd or 3rd you find that the habit of gobbling and lounging is harder to break than you thought, do you feel like you’ve blown it? Maybe next year, you say.

I was thinking how many years ago I was able to give up smoking on New Year’s. So I have believed that, whether a real thing or not, the concept of turning over a new year and turning over a new leaf are intertwined. But the friend I quit with didn’t manage to do so for more than a few days, may she rest in peace.

So what was the difference? The main difference is that my motivation was to get my body into healthy hospitable baby-making mode. I wanted to get pregnant. It was that deep biological intention that sustained me and kept me from ever smoking again. New Year’s was a mere convenient starting point.

Understanding that calendar/clock time is a convenience and not a reality helps us to recognize our own delusion when we, for example, ‘can’t wait for this awful year to be over’. We throw away whole days, weeks and months when we say things like ‘I’m having a bad week.’ Or ‘I got up on the wrong side of the bed and now this day is shot.’

We can see how firmly we believe in it when we ask the clock instead of our stomach whether it is time to eat. It’s skillful to notice all the ways we put this made-up system in charge of our lives instead of staying in tune with nature’s rhythms, cycles and seasons. How much more skillful it is to stay present in this moment, resetting wise intentions again and again, instead of waiting around until the clock or calendar dictates your efforts.

Notice if this collective useful agreement about the clock and calendar takes on the semblance of absolute reality in your life. See if there’s any room for acknowledging nature’s cyclical seasonal arising and falling away. If so, see if that helps you to embrace the nature of impermanence and your intrinsic interconnectedness with all life.

And, oh yes, Happy New Year!!!

It’s so easy to see other people’s delusions!

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delusionThe definition of awakening (or enlightenment) is ending greed, aversion and delusion — The Three Poisons.

It’s pretty easy to recognize greed: ‘If I just had fill in the blank I would be happy.’

It’s even easier to recognize aversion, finding fault and making an enemy of people, things, situations and aspects of ourselves.

But, at least for me and maybe for you, delusion is more challenging to see because if it’s a delusion, how can we recognize it as such? Probably because of the difficulty of being able to see it and truly understand it, I have over the past decade of teaching barely mentioned the subject of delusion. Hmmm. What have I been avoiding?

When I shared with students in class a chart titled A Wheel of Buddhist Terms, how all the topics interconnect, we noticed how the hub of the wheel, the core of the teachings — understanding the nature of impermanence, no separate self and suffering — is encircled with what we might call a ‘noose’ of greed, aversion and delusion. These are what gets in the way of deep wisdom. Obviously they are crucial to recognize, understand and release if we are to awaken. 

So, how interesting then that I have not explored the subject of delusion for myself or with the class to any real degree. What I was taught early on about delusion was that it’s a bit like walking around in a fog, a state of clueless distractedness, and that’s pretty much what I share when the topic comes up. But not surprisingly there’s much more to it than that.

We were looking at that Buddhist chart because, as we come to the end of our exploration of the Seven Factors of Awakening, I wanted to show how it fit into the panoply of Buddhist teachings, and also to ask my students if there was any other topic on the chart that resonated, anything they would particularly like to delve into next.

One student asked if it wouldn’t be logical to start at the center and work out. Maybe. But every aspect on the Wheel is a door to all of the teachings. That’s why you can walk into any Buddhist meditation group at any time, go on any retreat, listen or read any teacher, and receive immediate insight and connection to all the rest of the teachings. So when someone asks ‘Where should I begin?’ the answer is ‘Begin where you are.’

That’s why I like to teach in response to where my students are in their lives, what challenges they are facing, and what aspect of the teachings would be of most benefit in this moment. Like most dharma teachers in this tradition, I also teach from where I am in my own life. Otherwise the dharma is just dogma instead of a rich living exploration.

After I rolled up the chart, I ‘wrapped up’ my months-long exploration of the Seven Factors of Awakening with a brief talk about delusion, almost a nod to its existence, before pressing on to the next big thing.

Not so fast. Haha! It turns out delusion is exactly what the students want to explore. So that’s what we will do. High time, it looks like! But since seeing delusion within ourselves is so challenging to recognize, I suggest we begin by seeing if we can identify it in others. We do this with as much compassion as we can muster, and we certainly don’t call people out on it. But for our own edification we begin to notice delusion as it arises in the news, in characters in novels and in those around us. In this way we might get a clearer idea of what delusion is, and begin to recognize its patterns.

In a recent article on denial, Jack Kornfield tells a story about a man who is driving down the highway when he hears a safety alert on the radio: “Anyone driving north on Interstate 187 should use great caution! There is a car driving on the wrong side of the divided highway.”
The man glares through his windshield and mutters, “There’s not just one car driving the wrong way. There are hundreds of them.”

Obviously, it’s much easier to see someone else’s state of delusion than it is to see our own, isn’t it? So let’s start with what is easy as an entry point to the subject. Again, it’s super important to remember that this is not to point a finger at anyone but to see how universal delusion is, and then to open to the likelihood that we are not uniquely exempt.

Unless you feel ready to explore your own delusions with infinite lovingkindness but not indulgence, let’s stay with other people for awhile. As we begin to see the nature of delusion in others, we can practice the kind of compassion that will enable us to then recognize our own delusions without freaking out and making an enemy of them.

I am excited about taking on this challenge my students have presented to me. I hope you will join us in this rich exploration that we’ll begin in January. Until then I have a couple of traditional Winter Solstice and New Year’s things I like to do with my class and with you. So stay tuned for those deep and inspirational annual offerings.

But meanwhile, look around using your lens focused to notice delusion. At this particular moment in history, we have an abundance of delusional behavior you might notice. But try to go beyond the obvious. Jot down examples and make a real investigation. Report back!

Naming Our Poisons

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The Buddha taught of the three poisons, the mental states that manifest in unskillful action and cause us and those around us to suffer. They are greed, aversion and delusion. As our minds become clearer through the practice of meditation, we begin to see these three states as they arise within us. We can notice how our actions are rooted in and fed by one or the other of these states.

Right now, for example, I am sitting here feeling greedy for the dharma as I write, hungering to learn more, and the desire to share it in the clearest way possible so that my students may benefit from knowing it. This doesn’t sound like a bad thing, and it isn’t. Especially noticing it as it arises is a good thing. But noticing also brings an awareness of a tinge of energetic urgency, panic and fear that are also present in this hunger. Fear of it not being enough, of me not being enough, of my being an imperfect vessel for this information.

At the same time I am noticing a strong aversion to a phone call I am expecting from someone I have never talked with before but who appears to have anger issues as shown in his email. He is not a direct client of mine but is someone my client has to deal with. Suddenly I am ‘having to deal with’ him too. I don’t want to! I’m afraid! I feel the tension in my body rising up. I have held this tension since yesterday when we made this appointment for him to call me. And to top it off, he is already 47 minutes late in calling, which leaves me in this purgatorial state of dread.

Noticing these states, there may be a tendency to work with them, as in ‘fix’ them. That is just another form of aversion arising. I feel aversion for this state of aversion. How does that help? It really doesn’t.

So instead I breathe. Admittedly the breath started out as a sigh, but that reminded me to breathe! I send myself a little compassion. Compassion releases some of the tightness, infusing a sense of expansiveness that allows me to see more clearly. Already my shoulders have dropped an inch. However, I notice my jaw is tight. The buzz in my body is present.

I look out the window, the green and grey morning is calming. The tree outside my window doesn’t see my challenge and yet lives in this world. I don’t want to be the tree, but I am not unlike the tree. I don’t know what the tree experiences, but I can be pretty sure it is not currently dreading a phone call.

The tree is rooted in the earth. I sense my rootedness in the earth. The tree relies on its roots to weather high winds and powerful storms. I am anticipating some high wind this morning, so I sink into my roots, my connection. Thanks tree! Good advice!

The phone call went very well, by the way. A friendly constructive exchange with full agreement and goals achieved all around. Was that just a fluke? Or did my grounding myself help me to remember the humanness of the caller?

Having had a positive experience when anticipating a negative one is something I try to notice, adding it to my learned experiences. I am surprised that with attention, I actually do find I can reason with myself, saying, “Chances are, based on past experience, this will be fine. I will see how I wasted my time dreading an experience that much more often than not is a positive one.”

Noticing when we are operating out of greed or aversion is easier than noticing when we are operating out of delusion. What is delusion anyway? It’s like walking around in a fog and being constantly surprised when things happen. It can be operating as if we are an object being acted upon rather than the subject of our own lives, able to make decisions.

If we are in a state of delusion, how can we notice it? We can’t! At the moment of delusion the mind is enveloped in a cloud or fog, drifting, lost and unaware. But if we have set our intention to be present, then we can notice when it clears a bit. Just noticing that begins the development of awareness of delusion, and that awareness thins the fog. When the fog is thin, we have more options. We can drift or we can stay present. We can notice when the clarity begins to fade and we can take that as a reminder to reset our intention to be present with compassion, to notice the cloud of delusion as it comes and goes. Delusion has a very different felt sense than aversion or greed, but all three take practice to notice.

How do we work with these Three Poisons of greed, aversion and delusion? I remember when I first started studying Buddhism at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, there was a good deal of talk about how we are generally more inclined to one or the other of these mental states. People would say things like, “I am a greedy personality.” For me this seemed like just another way to label ourselves. We are often attracted to self-labeling, even if it’s an unattractive label.

Defining who we are seems to give us a place in the world, but it locks us in to a false sense of self. While we each do physically fill a finite place in this earthly life, defining it with limiting labels does not satisfy the deeper longing for a sense of understanding our infinite connection, the true nature of our existence.
We have talked before about the shift from the finite to the infinite view. For purposes of convenience in functioning in the world, we see ourselves as finite, singular and separate. But we discover through meditation, or perhaps through spontaneous insight, the infinite view that is always available to us, wherein we recognize that we are not separate at all, that we are a vibrant expression of life loving itself, like a drop of water flying through the sky knowing that it is a part of the sea-evaporation-cloud-rain-river-sea cycle of being which is a part of an even larger circle of life, and that all is one. With this infinite view, more fully discussed in previous discussions in the Eightfold Path, we are able to live more fully and joyfully in the world, even while being able to maintain our seemingly finite path with its various responsibilities, relationships and choices.

In the past few weeks, when discussing our clinging to the rock with our roots believing it to be our identity instead of releasing into the rich nourishing soil and allowing ourselves to grow to the fullness of our being, what we are talking about is letting go of the finite and releasing into the infinite. That shift from finite to infinite comes with our ability to be present and relaxed, releasing the tension that is our body’s way of holding the past and the future. This present moment fully experienced is the portal to understanding our interconnection, our being a part of and being supported by the infinite web of life.

While it may be tempting to label ourselves, it is more skillful to notice greed, aversion and delusion arising in our experience, and not get tangled up in saying, ‘I am an aversive personality type.’ Observing and judging ourselves to be more inclined to one of these three states may seem like it helps but it runs the risk of blinding us to the arising of the other two poisons, for we are tuning ourselves to notice the one above the others. All of us have all three poisons, even if not in equal measure.

The habit of self-labeling can make us passive, as if we have been indelibly stamped with this tendency and there’s nothing we can do. In truth, there’s nothing we NEED to do except be present and compassionate with all that arises in our experience, but that’s very different from a sense of helplessness that there’s nothing to be done about it, as if we are stuck. We are not stuck, we simply perceive ourselves to be stuck. In fact we are quite free, but we choose to pick out new wallpaper for our prison cell, remaking ourselves, rather than simply be present and watch the bars dissolve. We explored the whole concept of freedom in dharma talks quite a while ago. If that word resonates, perhaps you’ll want to read them. If freedom scares you, then that’s important to notice as well. Question in: “What am I afraid of?”

We can fall a little bit in love with even negative labels for at least they give us a sense of definition to cling to. But clinging to the hard rock of who we believe ourselves to be is the essence of what keeps us from opening to our true nature.

In a talk last year on ‘Holding the World in an Open Embrace’ I presented greed and aversion in the form of photos of two little girls, one holding tight to all her toys representing greed; the other with crossed arms and a pouty face representing aversion.

My sixteen month old granddaughter Lucy for the first time in my presence yesterday crossed her arms and pouted! Ah, aversion! This is the first manifestation in this form, though of course she has shown her preferences and dissatisfactions in a myriad of ways. But to actually see her cross her tiny chubby arms and pout with her little cupid bow mouth was quite something!

Where did she learn this particular manifestation? Lucy is my current teacher. I have been learning what is inherently human. When she wakes she does a natural yogi full body stretch, and she has done this since she was just a few months old. Now I try to remember to do that when I wake too. Where did I lose my natural inclination to do so?

And now seeing her pouting and crossing her arms I have to wonder how she developed this classic aversion pose? She doesn’t watch television, and has no older sibling to imitate. Where does she get this little Shirley Temple imitation? It’s a wonder. And it’s adorable and yes a little frightening. Aversion arises in Lucy and displays itself. We could easily go uh-oh and label her an aversive personality and be afraid, very afraid, of what the future holds with this crossed-armed pouty force to be reckoned with. But all that does is fuel our fear, lock her in a box of our labels, a box she will either stay in or break out of unless she can wear these labels lightly, knowing they do not define her true self.

In the past few weeks we have been discussing the inner aspects, what in psychological terms are also called sub-personalities, especially those we keep most hidden from our awareness that make up the shadow. When we are having a skillful inner conversation with an aspect, we might benefit from noticing whether it seems to be fueled by greed, aversion or delusion. I had mentioned Striver and Underminer, two aspects that have resurfaced in my awareness. Clearly Striver operates more from greed and Underminer from aversion, and both are delusional. (As some people might think I am to name inner aspects!! But it is a valuable exercise for the orderly exploration of a very complex lacy-patterned infrastructure of thoughts, emotions and beliefs that form a part of our experience that most influence, and sometime sabotage, our ability to live with awareness and a love of life.)

As a tool for self-exploration, knowledge of the three poisons of greed, aversion and delusion provide insight and clarity. We can use them as clues to see the fear at the root of the aspect we are exploring. These fears — the fear of separation, of exclusion, of not being acceptable, of disappearing, of being overwhelmed and washed away, of being judged, or of failing — are just a few of the ways we forget our connection to all that is and the universal oneness of being.

Second Noble Truth: Insight

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With the First Noble Truth we recognize the fact that there is suffering in life. Though it sounds harsh, this recognition to a degree relieves us of the anxiety about why we aren’t always perfectly happy. Once we have this recognition, once we sit with it awhile and mull it over in our minds, we may come to the Second Noble Truth.

The Second Noble Truth is an insight into the cause of our suffering. The Buddha had this insight when he sat under the Bodhi tree. He saw how there is pain that is a natural part of earthly existence, but that we create suffering on top of the pain. How do we do that?
The Buddha saw how we cause suffering by clinging to what we like and pushing away or denying what we don’t like.

He recognized a trait that has since been identified as part of the make up of all multi-celled creatures. These chemically-driven states of desire for pleasure and fear of pain are produced by our brains in order to help us survive.

So why would we want to get rid of these traits? First, we are not focusing on getting rid of anything. Instead we open to everything that arises in our experience, holding it in an open embrace of awareness.

As we become aware of these traits in our own nature and when we see them in others, we may see that often times we are not using them just for survival. We are grasping, clinging and pushing away or denying everything in our lives, not just things that are necessary for our survival or threaten it. These inherent traits of all animals have in humans turned into hyper-activated habituated tendencies.

Why is this so? Perhaps with our more developed frontal cortex — the part of the brain that enables us to imagine infinite possible outcomes — we are constantly activating physical and chemical reactions to imagined situations. Our overactive imaginations in our constantly thinking minds with all the re-runs, re-dos, application of acquired knowledge and sheer fabrications, have put us into mental over-drive. The result is an almost constant state of fear. This is not the fear of something we are actually facing in this moment, the way a deer will run away from anyone that comes too close. This is an ongoing state of mind that, lacking any current threat, will create imagined ones to fill the void.

What does fear do to us physically? If you’ve ever noticed a spider shrink into itself when it feels threatened, you know that that is what we do as well. A baby at four months is suddenly a little more wary of strangers, and her first response is to shrink a little into herself for a moment while she assesses the situation.

We adults do this too, but we easily end up staying there, tightened up into knots of tension, where we get stuck in a state of perpetual sense of alarm and isolation. We can’t sense our connection because we are locked into a hard separate stance. When we discover a connection with some particular person, situation or object, we are so relieved that we cling to them, and can’t bear to let this moment pass where we feel some relief from our ongoing sense of isolation. So we go from Teflon to Velcro with no place in between, with no way to inhabit our bodies and our being that is truly comfortable and easy.

Over the past weeks of exploring the First Noble Truth, I have been asking you to really notice how you cause suffering in your life. And what you have mentioned are the very tendencies the Buddha saw in his insight about how we create suffering in our lives: greed, aversion and delusion. Most of us fall more heavily into one of these tendencies, but all of us have some of each. So let’s take them one at a time.

Greed
When we experience pleasure and get attached to it, want it to continue, don’t want to let it go, begin to identify with it, start to need it like an addictive fix, go unconscious around it – a bit of a brain bypass that has a quality of time-out relief to it – this is the grasping, clinging, clamping down upon nature of the greedy mind.

Aversion
The tendency toward aversion brings up critical thoughts, judgments about people, behaviors, environments, aesthetics, conditions and situations. Nothing is every quite right. Even the most delightful situation could be improved upon, if only….

Delusion
This tendency is the head in the sand, or a certain grogginess that can be easily swayed and confused. If it takes a stand, it’s a stand of denial, not wanting to face facts.

Now all these traits have some positive aspects: Greed can be experienced as a zest for life. Aversion can be creative, transformational and problem solving. The delusive trait can see all sides of an issue and may pave agreement among disparate ideologies. But all can cause suffering.

These three tendencies – this grasping, clinging, pushing away and denying – are simply things to notice as they arise in our experience. Recognizing them is useful. Using the labels of greedy, aversive or delusive is not useful. We have more than enough labels already, thank you very much!

Seeing a tendency in ourselves is cause for celebration, not shame. It’s not our fault that these tendencies exist. Nature programmed us this way to keep us alive.

Our impressively developed brains continue to make an increasingly complex system of technological developments. When we steep ourselves in this hive of activity constantly, when we keep pace with the rapid-fire nature of modern life in our culture, we quite naturally succumb to one or more of these traits that cause suffering. Needing a retreat from the hubbub, we may choose unskillful means to numb ourselves with drugs, intoxicants, gambling, shopping, mindless eating, and other addictive behaviors. These are the answers readily provided by advertisers, so they are usually the first recourse.

Yet it is not just in this advanced technological age that humans cause themselves suffering. The Buddha didn’t have a cell phone or a computer, nor was he a jet-lagged jet-setter. In fact he spent his whole life within a very small mostly rural area, living amidst nature. Yet he knew suffering, and he saw it manifest in all the humans he knew as well.

Sometimes people get misty-eyed about some more quiet ‘simpler’ time, thinking that happiness was much easier to come by in the old days. ‘Simple for whom?’ is what I always wonder, because when I look back I see intolerance, enslavement and injustice. I am so grateful to be living now!

Not to exonerate the era we are in from these same forms of blindness. We continue to disrespect and trash the earth and, because of our vastly greater numbers, the impact is much greater. We trash our own bodies with faux food, and our governments wage war against each other over access to resources. And we live at a pace that is unsustainable and cannot be compensated by a week on the beach every summer.

But we are also, to a much greater degree than in past centuries, recognizing ourselves in each other, recognizing our connection to all of the inhabitants of this small blue planet. There are many movements afoot — not just in spiritual communities — that are slowing down the pace of life, acknowledging the value of this moment, of staying present.

Regardless of what era we live in, the development of the human brain has created this potential for creating misery, for getting out of balance. And the further refinement of it, through the insights of the Buddha and many other awakened beings, offers us skillful means to end, or at least cope with, our suffering.

The first step on this path is being able to recognize these traits of grasping, clinging, pushing away and denying as they arise in our experience. This is a great step to awakening! Don’t shut down now just because it feels uncomfortable to acknowledge something that seems to reflect badly on you. It doesn’t! Relax! We’re all in the same boat here.

So now as we explore for ourselves the Second Noble Truth, the challenge is to stay open. Yes, I know, this feels so personal, but it’s universal. And if we can gently but firmly be present to notice these tendencies in ourselves, we can begin to experience more spaciousness.

The key to sitting with the Second Noble Truth is to tap into compassion. We approach it with a great deal of metta, loving-kindness so that we won’t be swallowed up by the aversiveness that might be prompted by this inner discovery. Agh! I don’t want to be like that! Or I’m not like that!

No one said this work is easy, but there are ways to make it easier. I had a wonderful teaching a few months ago, watching my newborn granddaughter sleeping peacefully in her bassinette. Then suddenly she started rooting and struggling, waving her fists and poking her tongue in and out, wanting, wanting, wanting something, anything to stick in her mouth. How strongly I related to that! I recognized myself, the way I will sometimes roam the kitchen, looking in the refrigerator and the cupboards looking for a little something to stick in my mouth.

What an awakening it was for me to see that this is something born in me. My granddaughter was two weeks old! I didn’t invent this craving, I don’t have to feel shame for it! Of course, it’s not a free pass to eat everything in sight, but it is a deep acceptance of my own nature.

And then she gave me another insight, one that reined me in from forging my way to the kitchen. I noticed that after 30 seconds or so, her wanting, wanting, wanting passed, and she slipped into deeper sleep. She let it go. It passed. And if I pay attention, if I don’t rush to fulfill my wanting, if I sit with it a bit, I notice that yes indeed, she’s right: the wanting does pass.

So working with the Second Noble Truth is both humbling and enlightening. We are not trying to see how bad we are. We are accepting that we are human and finding some peace in that awareness. And perhaps we can hold it lightly, take ourselves less seriously, and feel less as if we have some fortress to defend.

Acknowledging and noticing is a continual process of creating spaciousness and awakening. It is made more painful if we see ourselves as isolated individuals up on a stage with judges about to call us out. If we can let view go, let ourselves be held in loving-kindness, if we can see ourselves as the small children we once were and hold ourselves with parental love, then we can begin to see each of these traits as clues to suffering, rather than one more reason to beat ourselves up.

So I hope during the week you will allow this level of noticing to bring about insights. And I hope that you receive the insights with great compassion.

This is the practice.