Category Archives: preferences

Are you defined by your yum, yuck or yawn?

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(NOTE: We are exploring the Buddha’s Eightfold Path, a handy set of tools that help us recognize and end suffering in any situation. The first of the eight ‘tools’ or aspects that we’ve been looking at is Skillful View. Our view of existence is off-kilter if we think that everything can or should stay the same, and if we believe we are isolated instead of an integral part of the fabric of being. Because impermanence is so obvious in the changing of the seasons and in the mirror, I only ask that you look around and at least accept if not celebrate the ever-changing wonder if life.
Understanding the concept of ‘no separate self’ is more challenging, because everywhere we look we find cultural reinforcement of the belief that we are separate and in need of identity fortification. So to help us, I’ve brought in the Buddha’s Five Aggregates to delve deeper.)

In the last post we considered whether the answer to ‘Who am I?’ is this body we care for, enjoy, abuse and suffer. We saw how the body grows, ages, dies, and is subject to illness and injury. We recognized that on a cellular level the body is inseparable from the rest of the physical world. And we observed that, for the most part the body is beyond our control, as we had no say in most of its dimensions, coloration and distinctive features, and it operates independently of our will for the majority of its functions. Impermanent, not separate, and beyond our control in many ways.

These are what make us understand that the body doesn’t define us: changeable, inseparable and beyond our control. We apply this same kind of inquiry around these filters to the four other aggregates. All these teachings shine a light for you to look and see for yourself. Please don’t take my word for it, or even the Buddha’s. Discover for yourself if this is true.

Yum, yuck and yawn
Now we continue to the Second Aggregate that keeps us clinging to the painful belief that we are separate: Feeling tones, the way we experience things as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, what I like to call yum! yuck! or yawn.

We all have things we like and don’t like. Where we get in trouble is when we lock in those preferences and believe they define us. What a depletion of enjoyment it would be to narrow down life’s experiences to only a predefined set of preferences that relies on our not being fully present to our senses in each moment.

Let’s use chocolate as an example. Look at the difference between tasting a piece of chocolate with a fresh palate, really experiencing the flavors, and claiming “I’m a chocolate lover (or a chocoholic) so I love this.” Caught up in assumptions and beliefs, we activate the craving and maybe gobble it up without tasting it at all. Do we even like chocolate in this moment? How would we know? All our thoughts and emotions are abuzz and entangled in ideas of identity.
As a person who has long identified with being a ‘chocoholic’ and bonding with friends over that belief, I can attest to the fact that, if I am truly in the moment tasting in a meditative way, the sensations of eating chocolate are not as satisfying as I believe them to be. Oh no, who am I without my chocolate? There’s almost a sense of betrayal to my tribe of chocolate lovers.

Now let’s expand our exploration into other preferences and how we define ourselves by them. How about a sports team? Our local basketball team is almost all new players and one of the team’s shining stars has an injury so won’t be able to play this season. Yet fans will continue to follow and root for their team, wear their jerseys and wave their banners. Why? Because that team brand is part of how they identify themselves as part of a particular tribe. Automatic acceptance and connection.

Then there’s political affiliation. This is not simply a logically thought out set of ideas and then finding politicians to go carry them out, is it? No, this is deeply rooted loyalty. When I was in elementary school, enjoying the easy camaraderie of my classmates, I suddenly felt isolated because it was presidential election season and all the kids sang “I like Ike!” while my mother was devotedly working for Adlai Stevenson. My sense of self was more strongly defined by family and there was no way I would ever betray that by putting on an Ike button to fit in with my friends. I was too young to have any clue what either of the candidates planned to do if elected, yet my perceived identity forced me to take sides. Notice how much other-making comes out of preferences. It can be pretty toxic stuff!

RIght about now, you might be feeling like the Buddha’s asking you to chuck your choices in life, and that is not the case. All that is being asked is to be fully alive in this moment to recognize that our preferences are not who we are. In doing so we might actually be able to enjoy them more or engage in a more meaningful way. Because all we’ve been doing is narrowing our options for savoring life in the fear that without labels we will be lost.

When in fact we will be found! We find ourselves fully alive in this moment, able to appreciate all that arises, able to send lovingkindness to all beings without regard to their tribal affiliations. We can root for a team for the fun of the game, yet still care if a player on another team is hurt. We can seek solutions to challenges without making enemies of those who out of fear resist the changes we seek, or don’t see things as we do. In not making enemies we open to the possibility of real conversations and beneficial means.

I remember arriving late to my 20th high school reunion. My classmates were already seated at big round dinner tables, and the only seats left for us were with people I didn’t know. It turns out in high school they were kids I kept clear of — the ‘greasers’ with their hot rods, the girls with beehive hairdos and heavy makeup. Oh no! But guess what? Twenty years later they were just ordinary people like us, and we had a very pleasant time with them.

Defining ourselves by our preferences, we may feel loved when someone gives us what we like — they’ve been paying attention! – and conversely feel invisible if they give us something we would never choose for ourselves — OMG, they have no clue who we are. But maybe we’re the ones who haven’t been paying attention. After all, our preferences change throughout our lives, depending on what we are exposed to, what experiences we have had with them. There was a time our granddaughter was so excited to see broccoli on her plate she would sing a song about it. An ode to Bahkalee. Now she turns up her nose at it. Tastes change. 

One day in the mid 1970’s I was walking down the street wearing my favorite mini-skirt, when suddenly I felt naked! I could not take a step further. I had to go back home and change. One minute the fashion I had been wearing happily for a number of years was fine, and the next minute it was a total embarrassment!

For those who don’t change with industry-promoted fashions, there might be a certain smugness to having a personal sense of style. But this too can become a ‘taking ourselves to be our preference.’ That style so much defines us that we can’t let it go. There is nothing wrong with our preferences. We only get in trouble when we believe that our preferences define us.

How much trouble can a preference cause? My mother smoked for most of her life. Certainly she was addicted, but she once told me that if it were just a physical addiction she could have kicked the habit years before. What she couldn’t kick was her idea of herself as a smoker — how sophisticated she believed herself to be. If she quit smoking would she be as intellectual and cool? Well, she finally did quit and she was as cool and smart as she’d ever been. Unfortunately it was too late to save her from the emphysema that killed her. She paid a huge price, and all of us who loved her paid a huge price, for her belief that smoking defined her.

Our choice of cars is a powerful preference that for most of us has to correlate with our belief about who we are. I drive an electric car. Enough said! I am automatically putting out a statement about my core values. My daughter is making her statement with a monster truck you can hear coming from two blocks away. She wouldn’t be caught dead driving my car. I wouldn’t be caught dead driving her truck! These hunks of metal are very much tied into who we believe ourselves to be. Next time you see an ad for a car, notice how the message is geared toward your identity, or the identity of someone you perceive to be very different from you.

Which brings up whether our preferences are all that distinct and individual. In fact my mother’s belief that she was cool when smoking was suggested to her by those 1930’s black and white movies where smoking was almost a fine art. Our choice of fashions, cars, homes, etc. are only ever in part our own. We share them with the rest of our culture, or certain groups within our culture with whom we identify. So they are not uniquely us.

When we are so caught up in the belief that we are this preference, we suffer. If, for example, we are assigned a rental car that doesn’t match our personality, we might experience discomfort being seen in something that so ill suits us.

Because these preferences are impermanent, changeable, sometimes even fickle, how can they define us? Beyond that they are ungovernable, out of our control. Don’t believe me? Just try to be sexually attracted to someone you’re not. Just try to eat a food you find disgusting. Some of our preferences seem to be hardwired. Even though they may change, they seem to change on their own, not because we mandated the change. And when they change, we might feel uncomfortable, as if we’ve lost a bit of who we are. But if it is not within our control, how can a preference be who we are?

We have preferences galore, enough to keep all kinds of industries in business for many years to come. But is this the self we are seeking?
Impermanent, insubstantial and out of our control — hmm, probably not.

There is a great simile from the Buddha’s teachings of the Five Aggregates of a dog tied to a post. The post represents the Five Aggregates we take ourselves to be. When the dog walks, it can only walk circles around the post. We can’t wander beyond the edges of who we believe ourselves to be. We are chained to these beliefs just as that dog is tied to the post.

The Pali Canon, the recorded teachings of the Buddha, quotes him as saying that to define yourself in any way is to limit yourself, and that the question, “What am I?” is best ignored.

Notice for yourself over the coming week the degree to which you believe your preferences define you. To the degree that they define you, they confine you! We are not trying to erase preferences. We just let go of the idea that they are us.

Come fully into the moment; be present with the fleeting nature of whatever is happening. With awareness, you might free yourself from the tight leash of the belief that you are your body or your preferences. How does that feel?

Image by Jill Wellington

Disguises can sometimes help discover authenticity

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Halloween has come and gone and that’s just fine with me. Except for the adorableness of little trick or treaters and the creativity of some neighbors, it’s a holiday I could do without. I don’t enjoy being scared on purpose and I’ve never been into donning costumes.

But I do remember a time when I accompanied my then teenage daughter to the wig store. She wanted a straight long hair option to her shorter naturally curly do, and I was along for the ride. Or so I thought. It was too much fun not to at least try on a few wigs. My hairstyle at the time was a cap of mousy curls, so I tried on a straight blonde bob with bangs. I looked in the mirror and thought Whoa! Whozzat?

gertaIt definitely was not me, or at least not the me I knew. Whoever she was came to life full-blown, and claimed her name was Gerta – pronounced Gair-ta. And she demanded I buy that wig. So I did.

Much to my husband’s dismay. I had always heard that husbands like a little variety to spice things up, but not mine. And certainly not this cheeky chick. Wearing my Gerta wig, I would utter things I normally wouldn’t even think, let alone say. I’d been taken over by a whole different persona, and it was kind of fun.

I was normally shy in unfamiliar situations, as if a whole swarm of butterflies lived in my stomach. But wearing that wig I remember one time arriving late at a coworker’s birthday dinner with a large group of friends I didn’t know. Instead of sneaking in and quietly finding my seat as I would normally do, I made a grand entrance down a circular staircase, and somehow had them all in stitches. Maybe at first they thought I was hired entertainment until I sat down at the table.

Another time, a group of us was asked to sing a few personalized oldies at our friend’s 40th birthday party, and while normally I would stand in the back and mouth the words, that time, with my Gerta persona in place, I belted the lyrics out and had a great time.

Though I rarely wore it, I kept that wig around for a number of years. But more importantly, having had that empowered Gerta experience showed me that my seemingly ingrained shyness was not necessarily ‘me’.

To build up my self-confidence in order to be able to do things I wanted to do, I got up the nerve to join my local Toastmasters club where week after week I stood in front of a group, making every effort to speak coherently. With practice and kind encouragement, I found my voice. Now I can speak to large groups and be completely at home — not playing a role, not taking on a persona, like that cheeky Gerta — just unafraid to be seen with all my vulnerabilities and variations.

Have you ever had that freeing experience of a costumed transformation? A Halloween costume? A role in a play? What did that persona have that you think you don’t? Did you like her or him?

In class one student shared an experience of getting together with a group of friends to create some festive craft for a member of their group who was seriously ill and in need of good cheer. That sense of love for this friend, and the support of the group, let her discover the unknown delight of letting herself enjoy being outlandishly silly.

Another student told us how she came into a leadership role, something she had been averse to all her life. Again, it was in having a strong purpose — a cause she cared about, and having the encouragement of others who shared that sense of purpose and saw the latent leadership qualities she had within her.

Both these experiences parallel my own of joining Toastmasters, where I received so much support.  But what was my purpose? What drove me to want to speak in the first place? Decades ago I had had a life-transforming experience through developing a meditation practice, and I wanted to help others, women especially, who may find themselves overwhelmed with wanting to please others, focusing exclusively on the needs of all who relied on them, and in the process losing any sense of their own needs.

So adding these three personal experiences into the mix, let me ask you again if there is any unexpressed part of you that is being kept down for lack of a sense of purpose, love or calling, and/or a lack of support and encouragement from those around you?

Another student in class who had been feeling somewhat stalled and ambivalent in her recent decision to pursue a particular career, came to tears when she realized this was exactly where she needed to put her focus: Finding that passionate sense of purpose — why and for whom was she pursuing this line of work — and connecting with those who support her in that effort.

It seems sometimes we need a little playful exploration outside our comfort zone in order to expand our understanding of our most authentic self.

Getting past perfect
We all have assumptions about who we are, who we want to be or ‘should’ be. Our practice of meditation is in part about letting go of the need to establish a polished identity to present to the world. We are present to notice the desire to remake ourselves and perhaps investigate where it comes from.

There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by other people. But it’s important to see them as the humans they are. It’s so easy to get caught up in comparing mind, lost in the painful disparity between what we judge as our messy insides and what we perceive to be their perfect polished outside. Chances are their insides are messy, too. Can we allow for that? Chances are others see us as a lot more perfectly polished than we feel. Can we make room for that likely possibility?

Even if we are content with our identity, we may feel it’s important to be clear on just what that identity is. We may feel that in order to be liked, loved, respected, etc., we need to be seen in a certain way, so we go all ‘if you like pina colada and getting caught in the rain’, trotting out our likes and dislikes, hope and dreams, accomplishments, opinions, phobias, etc., looking for the safety of being seen for who we believe ourselves to be.

But our need to establish identity based on our preferences, how we look, how we think, etc. sets us up for very shallow and limited connections. It locks us in to choices and opinions that we may have made when we were seven or seventeen or thirty-seven. It creates a tangled knot of unexamined and probably inaccurate detritus that blocks our view, and others’ view of us. It fortifies a separate seeming identity that keeps us isolated and unhappy.

How liberating to simply exist in this moment and respond to whatever arises in whatever way feels natural. We can be vulnerable and honest and fluid. This is not to hide or obscure any current preferences, etc. that we may have; it’s only to understand that they do not define us. And, as practicing meditators, we use awareness and wise effort to be kind, truthful and timely in our responses.

We can succumb to the idea that in the practice of meditation and the study of Buddhist teachings, there is a goal to ‘become’ a better, wiser, kinder person — as if this is some grand makeover we are doing here. It’s easy to get caught up in trying to build a superpower of wisdom and compassion, to become some charismatic being with the ability to withstand a gazillion traumas at a single bound.

But that’s not what we’re doing here. We’re not trying to ‘be’ anything. We’re not donning a new persona. We are not taking the wisdom teachings, and constructing, as if out of Legos, the ideal persona of an enlightened being. Instead we rest in the understanding that we are all fleeting expressions of life loving itself — a complex ever-changing stream of patterns of being. Just noticing what’s arising in our experience with curiosity and compassion, releasing assumptions as we find them, to rest in a joyful state of being. We set and reset our intention to be present in this moment just as it is, holding it in an open and loving embracing. That’s our practice. Even as we live our intention to contribute to the well being of all life, in a way that is, quite naturally, our own unique expression of that love.

In our exploration of the Seven Factors of Awakening, we have been looking at Equanimity.

As with all of the factors, any attempt to appear to ‘have equanimity’ will not be authentic. The whole of our exploration, investigation and practice are undermined when our core intention is to be seen as wise, mindful, etc. We do ourselves a great injustice when we don’t allow for all of who we are to simply be a presence in our experience, to acknowledge what is arising with as much kindness and compassion as we can.

If we have been trying these factors on like wigs at a costume shop, seeing how we can bluff our way through and do a convincing caricature of a person who has it all together, then we might be intrigued and inspired in the short run — as I was with Gerta, discovering the possibility of such a way of being within me — but in the long run the wig will get itchy and irritating, and we’ll come to understand that to truly awaken takes the regular honest challenging practice of simply being present and allowing ourselves to grow, learn from the dharma and our own insights without the need to become anything or anyone.

 

The problem with preferences

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One of the core insights we come to through the regular practice of meditation is recognizing the nature of impermanence. This insight is valuable because it helps to free us from the suffering caused by grasping and clinging and wanting things to stay the same.

One of the easiest ways to have such an insight is to observe how a tree loses its leaves. But for many of us, seeing a tree lose its leaves sets off an inner complaint: Oh, winter is coming and I don’t like winter. Why can’t it stay warm and light always?

Whatever our personal preferences are, they get in the way of simple observation, and the gift of insight into the nature of being.

We don’t need to make an enemy of preferences — in fact, doing so would be just another barrier to awakening — but it is helpful to recognize preferences when they show up and see their nature. We can see how they can take any moment or situation and find fault with it. It would have been a perfect vacation but it was too…(fill in the blank). One small preference unmet can sabotage the whole experience. It gnaws at us so we become blind to all the beauty and wonder that is there for us in every moment.

We all have lots of preferences; so many, in fact, that we don’t take the time to see if they are true. Sometimes our preferences go so long unrecognized that when we do take the time to notice, we might discover we no longer ‘love’ or ‘hate’ the food or condition or whatever we have been claiming to feel so strongly about.

Let’s take the example of some treat we claim to love. Perhaps we describe ourselves as a chocoholic or addicted to ice cream. Because our thoughts are so full of attachment to this idea of ourselves, with all judgments we may have about this long-accepted preference, we are often so mentally embroiled in anticipation, anxiety, guilt, etc. as we approach the food itself, that we can’t taste it. We devour it to be done with it and past this complicated set of thoughts and emotions.

Can we slow down really taste the treat we claim to love. Is it really delicious? Great! Or when mindfully attended, without the urgency and all the entangled thoughts and emotions, is it not quite so delicious as we assumed? Perhaps there are even some aspects of the flavor or texture that are actually unpleasant. If the food is not the best choice for a meal, then this may feel like a wonderful discovery to recognize that we are addicted to the mental and emotional patterns of anticipation and the nostalgia of foods and experiences often more than the food or experience itself.

When we pay attention, we see how preferences, like everything else, change. That may feel discomforting if we believe that our accumulated combination of preferences define us. And we feel unloved if someone forgets our preferences. Is that true? Well, let’s check. Are your feelings hurt if someone who professes to love you forgets that you don’t like, let’s say, mushrooms? If so, then you are entrenched in the idea that your preferences are intrinsically you.
They are not! The Buddha put together a whole list called the Five Aggregates that gently but firmly walks us through all the things that we are not, and our preferences are second on the list. [READ MORE]

We don’t have to get rid of our preferences, but it really helps to notice and question them. Preferences are often rooted in fear. If we have a preference for a certain temperature or kind of weather, we may have positive associations, sweet memories, nostalgia super-charges our preferences. We can be closed off from many experiences because they are unfamiliar, so there may be something to fear, something to make us uncomfortable, something to make us feel insecure.

Fortunately, we don’t have to do anything new to have insights. We just come to our senses: to see, hear, taste, smell, touch as if every moment is new. Because it is! It may seem the same, but because of the nature of impermanence, the world presents itself fresh to us in each moment, never to be replicated! The Symphony of Now.

Since this is the way of things, and nothing we do can make it stay exactly the same, why not acknowledge and even celebrate impermanence.

Certainly when we have a great loss, impermanence seems cruel. But that same impermanence helps us to survive the loss, and over time to ease our grief and heal from the wound of what may feel like an amputation.

Impermanence delights us when it brings on something we enjoy: blossoms in the garden, a beautiful sunrise, etc. But if we are not open to all of impermanence, even those moments are tinged with sadness because we can’t keep it like this forever.

Our extreme preference for certain aspects of impermanence and our loathing of others is something to notice. Can we be compassionate with ourselves when we feel the dread of changes we don’t like? Can we be tender without being indulgent? Can we practice being present with whatever arises just as it is, and greet it as the wonder it is?

Think about your own preferences. See if you can notice them when they arise. See whether they are as true as you thought. See if you cling to them as an intrinsic part of what makes you you. See if your preferences cause you to suffer in any way. And then see if you can hold your preferences more lightly.

Preferences II :: Seeing for ourselves

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In the last blog post we looked at how we can be imprisoned by our preferences. I suggested we notice during the week any preferences arising and what effect they had. In class we had an interesting discussion about our various findings. I have heard from some readers that this was a valuable topic for them. Maybe for you as well?

Let me confess right up front that, despite my intentions, I didn’t give up any of my preferences, my little darlings. The very idea!

But I did pay attention. When a leaf blower started making its noise when I was reading outside one day, I noticed my habitual reactivity…irritation, muscle tightening, asking why now?, etc. Then I challenged myself to simply allow that sound to be a presence. This exercise did not make me pro-leaf-blowers, but it did let me see how allowing my preferences to dictate my happiness is my choice, that it is my reactivity that makes me suffer.

I found it much easier to notice other people’s preferences rather than my own. Of course! (And that’s a perfectly valid place to start in any kind of inner investigation as long as we do it with kindness and the understanding that we have our foibles too.) I saw many examples of misery by preference:

crowsOne evening this week I was sitting on the deck of a friend’s house, savoring the lingering warmth of early autumn, surrounded by redwoods and enjoying the conversation of old friends. Then at the sound of a few crows cawing, the hostess, who is one of the most loving and thoughtful people I know, said she wished she had a gun! Goodness! She also has a sense of humor, but I wasn’t absolutely sure she wasn’t serious. Among the assembled there were those of us who loved crows and those who hated them. There seems no neutral ground when it comes to crows. I love them, especially the spectacle of them filling the vast sky at dusk. But I have many friends who are bothered by them, especially first thing in the morning when they can set up quite a cackle fest. I might feel differently about crows if they woke me out of a delicious dream. And I admit there’s a red squirrel who one summer totally decimated our Japanese maple. If that varmint shows up again, there’s no telling what my preferences might cause me to do!

I noticed how our own preferences can affect others. I was standing in line at the fabric store with my husband and little granddaughter, having her choices of gloriously tacky gold lame and pink with sparkly hearts fabrics cut so we could add a few more items to the dress up box. The employee was cheery, chatting with us as she cut. Then the woman behind us asked if they could get another cutter to come up. Not an unreasonable request. She was in a hurry, she had other things on her to do list. I could understand that. But at the same time, the air of happy collaboration on making a little girl’s imaginative play come true shifted to the employee feeling hurried and somehow failing in her job, even though she had been cutting right along; and my feeling we were somehow in this woman’s way with our few ribbons and fabrics. Even though it was indeed a reasonable request, it still sucked some of the air out of the room.

Living our lives as we do, most of us spend a lot of time in lines, and our preferences are easily apparent there. Some of us spend a lot of time online in order to avoid standing in line. But there’s such an opportunity for awareness practice in line. Can we be present? Can we take the opportunity to be kind, to send a little metta, to notice what is pleasant in this moment? Must everything have a driven quality of just wanting to get things done, so we can…what? What is it at the end of the day of errands and chores and whatever else that we are rushing to get to so we can be present?

If we’re not practicing being present in all situations, regardless of our preferences, we won’t be present at the moment we’ve been waiting for. Being present is an ongoing practice.

In class, one student said that she always tries to give herself more than enough time to get places so that she can relax and enjoy the ride. It was a preference that she noted. That’s a preference rooted in Wise Intention. We all have many preferences rooted in Wise Intention. Noticing our preferences helps us to distinguish between those and the ones that sabotage, undermine and deaden us to life.

Another student said that she found resistance to exploring her preferences during the week, and some confusion between preference and choice. I suggested that we have a choice in particular situations, but our preferences are underlying habituated patterns of thought that strongly influence what choices we make. So we might say, ‘I prefer seafood, so if there’s shrimp on the menu, I’ll choose that.’

One day this week I was walking out of an air-conditioned classroom with a fellow poetry student who said that she didn’t like heat. It felt pleasantly warm outside to me. She added that she was an autumn and winter person. That’s an example of suffering by preference. It illustrates how we take it to the next step of defining ourselves by our preferences. In her case, she was ‘dooming’ herself to feeling out of sorts half the year — so half of her life.

A friend who follows the blog said she particularly appreciated the post on preferences because it’s been something she has been thinking about a lot since she read about a woman who was traveling and stayed someplace with no hot water. She was avoiding bathing because she had a strong preference for hot water, as most of us do. But after a few days she noted how her preference was causing discomfort of another sort. So she took a cold shower and much to her surprise discovered it was refreshing.

We can surprise ourselves by challenging our preferences. It’s easier to do when traveling, when we are often confronted with new and different situations. I will be traveling in a few weeks and I will take this challenge up with renewed vigor then, especially that preference for sleeping in my own bed.

The class was full of good noticing, and I hope if you have been following the blog, that you took on the challenge and had some aha moments about your preferences, or those of other people. I’d love to hear about them. Just click on ‘reply’ above this post and let me know. (If you’ve never commented before, there’s a one-time request to register. This is simply to avoid trolls and spam.)

Just as a reminder, these kinds of explorations are not done with instruments of torture or combat. They are done with respectful tenderness. If you find that you are being hypercritical of yourself for anything you’ve noticed, see if you can be kinder. Not indulgent, but kind, like a parent caring for their child. We parent ourselves in this way, and we grow in the process.

Are you imprisoned by your preferences?

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In the past four posts, I’ve written about the mind states of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity: the Brahma-viharas, heavenly abodes, that we cultivate through our practice of mindfulness.

But part of cultivating any mind-state is noticing what obstacles arise, causing disruption. One of these obstacles, easily discernible, is our collection of preferences and our attachment to them. So let’s take a look at preferences. We all have them. I certainly do. Most of my preferences I earned the hard way, by trial and error. Why would I even think to question them? I feel resistance at the very idea. Perhaps you do too. But because we know there is value in those four expansive mind states, let’s just open to the possibility that there is something worth examining here.

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Darlene Cohen

Recently I was rereading an essay by Darlene Cohen, a Zen priest at Green Gulch who died in 2011. She compared her experiences of going through two surgeries twenty years apart. In the first, she felt that the period of surgery and recovery was completely separate from her normal life. I can imagine how she wanted to ‘get back to normal.’ But after years of Buddhist practice, when she had the second surgery, she found there was ‘no rent in the fabric’ of her life. Her days were ‘all of a piece’. She wrote, “I see students, I get cut open, I eat Jell-O, I receive visitors, I feel as sick as a barfing dog, I pace the corridors, I ride home with the passenger seat all the way down, and so on, to the experience of golden apricot colors, helplessness, dread, and being borne on a sheet carried by angels.’

(In class I was able to read more extensively from her essay, but because of copyright laws, I can only offer you brief quotes. If you are a woman living in Marin, I encourage you to attend the Thursday morning class so you don’t miss out on the wholeness of experience. There’s a lot that doesn’t make it into the blog post. And I encourage all readers to consider purchasing the book of essays: Buddha’s Daughters, Teachings by Women Who Are Shaping Buddhism in the West. My copy is filled with post-it notes, so as I revisit those pages, I expect to draw inspiration from other Buddhist women in the West. And you might too!)

Darlene Cohen found for herself how her preferences created obstacles. Without making an enemy of the obstacle, we can notice how when we get caught up in preferences, we grasp at and cling to some experiences and push others away. That is the Buddha’s very definition of the cause of suffering.

Attached to our preferences, we become calcified in our little ruts of what is acceptable and what is not. Something as simple as a favorite flavor of ice cream can be an experiment in preferences. Darlene wrote that she dared herself to go beyond chocolate and chose blindly, ending up with a flavor she never would have chosen. But she discovered it was amazingly delicious. I know I certainly don’t stray far from my preferences. But what am I missing? Is it true that my life is dictated by preferences? And aren’t some preferences valuable?

At least some, hopefully many, choices we make in life are rooted in Wise Intention: Doing no harm to ourselves and others. Aren’t these choices preferences? It seems skillful to look to the source of our preference when we come upon it. Is it rooted in fear? Or is it rooted in kindness, compassion, awareness? Is it a habit that allows us to go mindless? These questions and more can help us understand the nature of how we are in relationship to the world around us. And how our world is shaped by our preferences.

I came across this quote the other day that fits in well here:
“What is freedom? It is the moment by moment experience of not being run by one’s own reactive mechanisms.” – Ken McLeod, Freedom and Choice

Preferences could certainly be called ‘reactive mechanisms’. They establish a set of reactions that may cause stress, distress, discomfort and dissatisfaction. Even the positive experiences are a little numb. Darlene mentioned ice cream, so let’s stay with that tasty subject about which most of us have strong preferences, one way or another. I have a preference for chocolate ice cream so that’s what I order, and in repeatedly choosing that over other flavor options, I enter a habituated reaction to the experience of having a chocolate ice cream cone. Is my mind even in the experience, sensing the taste, texture and temperature of what’s in my mouth? Or am just ‘happy’ to have something I craved? Is that truly happiness? There’s often some mixture of regret in having succumbed to temptation and fear of adverse effects. Whatever happiness there is certainly doesn’t last very long. It literally melts away!

We can look at where our preferences come from. Are we really still anti-brussel sprouts or is it just because the one time we tried them the cook didn’t do them justice? It’s worth questioning every preference we come upon, even those that seem benign.

Living in the rut of our preferences, we don’t recognize the freedom we have to reshape our experience. And if we are in relationships, we may be limiting others as well. In Darlene’s essay, she used the example of how her preferences shaped her younger life and the life of her small son. There was no way was she going to attend a ‘stupid Muppets movie’ or go to Disneyland, leaving her son to rely on other parents for those activities. Looking back, she regretted how much she missed by letting her preferences rule her in that way, saying, ‘What kind of twit chooses her aesthetic tastes over spending exuberant time with her child!’

Indeed! We can each look at our own choices and see if we are letting our preferences limit our ability to live fully and openly. Yes, perhaps some unpleasantness may occur if our preference filters are dropped. But in our practice we learn how to be present with unpleasantness, don’t we? We simply notice all that arises in our expansive field of compassionate awareness. If there is a pain, we stay present with the whole of the experience, noting all the small ever-changing sensations within it. We notice how our thoughts lurch into the past and future — ‘Oh no not this again!’ or ‘How long will this go on?’ We notice also whatever pleasant or neutral sensations are also present in this moment, so that we are not stuck in our automatic negativity bias. Imagine how liberating it would be to be able to be open to whatever comes. How much do we live in fear that things won’t be just as we want them to be. How attached are we to the belief that our slightest discomfort is intolerable?

In noting our preferences, we might also see to what degree we allow them to define us. This is especially noticeable if you or someone you know gets upset that a purported loved one doesn’t remember their preferences. ‘How could he not remember that I hate yellow! He doesn’t really love me.’ As if the preferences are the person. If you feel this way, it’s worth examining! Do you really believe that what people love about you is your preferences?

As we practice being fully present with whatever arises, we tap into a powerful freedom. We can be in situations where we have little control and still have equanimity and the resilience to respond skillfully to changing situations.

The past two weeks we have seen how natural disasters can play havoc with our nice ordered life, rooted in preferences. None of the people affected by hurricanes and earthquakes were consulted as to their preferences before finding themselves in those situations. And the more entangled they are in preferences, the more they suffer.

Of course, no one would actively choose disaster, loss of home, loved ones, power, communications, food, water, health care, etc. So doesn’t everyone suffer in these situations?  Everyone experiences pain, but there is a distinction between the pain we experience being alive in this life and the suffering we cause ourselves, compounding the pain many times over. If we are actively practicing being fully present and cultivating skillful ways of being in relationship with all that arises in our experience, then that experience shifts dramatically.

My heart goes out to all who have been affected by these natural disasters. As I watch, helpless to do anything but send metta and money, I am awed by the instantaneous outreach and self-organizing rescue aid that arises at times like these. It reminds me that a person at the mercy of their personal preferences may not be able to respond skillfully to changing circumstances. They are so caught up in a tight knot of reactivity that setting their personal preferences aside to meet the needs of the moment could be a huge challenge. It might be a moment of awakening, of breaking out of that dull deadening rut, but just as likely their reactivity to things not being the way they want them may make them turn away, rushing to find solace in something familiar, perhaps something self-destructive.

In Darlene’s essay she says that “a life lived openly without filters includes pain, heartbreak, Disneyland, and unpleasant occurrences. But you do have a satisfying feeling of being infinitely approachable; the universe gets through to you, whatever scenery it’s hauling.” Infinitely approachable. I love that!

So just as an exercise, perhaps as a little homage to Darlene Cohen and her wise teachings, but also as a gift to yourself, try opening to something beyond your habituated preferences, and see what happens. If you give it a try, please report back. And I will be taking note of and challenging my beloved preferences. Oh dear!