Breaking
Through
Ezra Bayda SUMMER 2012
tricycle
How to recognize and overcome three universal
obstacles to practice
Detours and obstacles are a fact of practice
life. Some arise
out of our own psychology and conditioning: patterns of
self-judgment and perfectionism, a tendency to procrastinate or
seek diversions, addiction to control, and the like. Other
obstacles seem to be more universal, and these are the ones that
nearly every practitioner faces at one time or another. These
obstacles are at the heart of practice, yet they are seldom given
the emphasis they deserve. But until we can see them clearly—see
how they manifest in our lives—it will be difficult, if not
impossible, for our practice to move forward.
There are three obstacles in particular that
we need to address.
Misunderstanding the depth of waking
sleep
The first obstacle to practice is not
understanding the magnitude and power of waking sleep. “Waking
sleep” refers to the state in which we live most of the
time—identified with, or lost in, our thoughts, our emotions, and
our actions. In the first place, we’re addicted to our thoughts:
believing that our thoughts and opinions are the Truth is the veil
through which we perceive reality. But we also have difficulty
controlling our emotions; in fact, we love to indulge them.
Furthermore, we can’t seem to stay in the present moment for more
than a few seconds at a time; the present is the last place we want
to be. Because we are so frequently lost in the obscuring confusion
of our thoughts and emotions, we lack the clarity and presence that
come when we are more awake.
Buddhism teaches that we are all born with
buddhanature and that our spiritual aspiration is to allow our true
nature to reveal itself, just as an acorn aspires to become an oak
tree. Yet emphasizing our basic goodness, as important as it is, is
only part of the picture. No matter how strong our aspiration may
be, if we don’t develop deep insight into the power and magnitude
of waking sleep, we will be blindsided by it again and again. It’s
imperative for us to understand that spiritual practice is not just
something we do when we’re sitting in meditation or when we’re on
retreat. Just as there is no end to the power of life means
practicing at all times, with everything we encounter, not just
when we’re on the cushion or when something upsets us. Failing to
see everything as an opportunity for practice is a setup for
frustration and disappointment, keeping us stuck where we are and
limiting our possibilities for inner growth. The more we include in
our practice, the more satisfying our life can be.
Underestimating resistance
The second obstacle we encounter in practice,
closely related to the first, is underestimating the degree to
which resistance is a predictable and inevitable part of a practice
life. Resistance comes in many forms: not wanting to sit in
meditation, not wanting to stay with our experience for more than a
few seconds, spinning off into thinking about the past or the
future, suppressing or avoiding emotional pain, finding fault with
ourselves, finding fault with others. We can see resistance in our
commitment to believing such thoughts as “This is too hard,” “I
can’t do it,” or “I’m unworthy.”
Yet another, more subtle form of resistance is
thinking and talking about practice rather than actually
experiencing our life. Thinking and talking about practice are easy
substitutes for the real effort that a practice life requires. We
resist facing life as it is because that would mean abandoning our
views of how we think it should be. The most basic form of
resistance is wanting life to be other than it is.
For the most part, we don’t really want to
wake up. We have to be honest about this. We want to hold on to our
beliefs and even to our suffering. Afraid of the unknown, we cling
to the familiar. We don’t want to give up our illusions even when
they make us miserable. Resistance is the ego’s effort to maintain
control. Yet no matter what form it takes, it brings us no peace.
Pema Chödrön tells a story about a friend who as a child had
recurring nightmares in which ferocious monsters were chasing her
through a house. Whenever she closed a door behind her, the
monsters would burst through the door and frighten her. Pema once
asked what the monsters looked like, but her friend couldn’t tell
her, because in the dream she had never turned around to
see.
At some point, however, she decided not to
turn away from what she feared. The next time she had the
nightmare, just as she was about to open a door to avoid being
caught by the monsters, she stopped running, turned around, and
looked the monsters in the eye. They were huge, with horrible
features, but they didn’t attack her; they just jumped up and down.
As she looked closer, the three-dimensional multicolored monsters
began to shrink into two-dimensional black-and-white shapes. At
that moment, the girl awoke, and she never had that nightmare
again.
It is in running away from our “monsters” that
we make them seem so solid. Whatever we resist exerts a strong hold
on us: in solidifying it, we empower it to stay in our mind and our
life. But when we cultivate the willingness to be with life just as
it is, our relationship to what we’ve avoided starts to change.
Once we see through the solidity of our resistance, our lives
become more fluid and workable. We’re able to move beyond where we
were once stuck. Even if we don’t like our life as it is, we don’t
need to wage war against it. We can start meeting our resistance
squarely by noticing all of the ways in which we avoid the present
moment, the ways in which we avoid practice, the ways in which we
resist what is. Understanding the depth of our resistance is of
major importance in furthering our practice.
Another form of resistance arises when we hit
the “dry spot.” The dry spot is the moment when we lose our
connection with the aspiration that originally brought us to
practice. Often we hit the dry spot when our expectations of
practice are unfulfilled—when it isn’t bringing us the immediate
peace, calm, or freedom from fear that we had hoped for.
Disappointment leads to anger, and anger to resistance.
It’s important to understand, however, that
vacillating between aspiration and resistance is the natural rhythm
of practice and that the dry spot is a natural manifestation of
this cycle. But the first few times we hit the dry spot, it doesn’t
seem natural at all. We may even feel as if we’re failing at
practice, since the thoughts that arise in these moments seem like
fixed truths. It’s hard to see them for what they are—simply
automatic reactions to the inevitable ups and downs of practice
life.
Hitting the dry spot is the point at which
students often leave practice. But if we can wait it out, we begin
to understand the natural cycle of resistance. We even come to
expect the doubting mind to arise. Doubt in itself is not the
problem. The problem comes from identifying with the doubting “me”
and believing that this is who we really are. But if seen for what
it is, doubt can even be a positive force in practice. Provided we
don’t get lost in the negative beliefs that arise with it, it can
lead to a deepening of our quest. As practice takes hold, we can
learn to use doubt as an opportunity to experience the grief of our
unfulfilled expectations about practice. We can learn to surrender
to, and reside in, the physical experience of what doubt feels like
in the body, instead of following the story line of negative
thoughts. Not following the story line can be difficult, because
the thoughts seem so true, so solid, so compelling. But if we can
stay with the visceral experience of doubt, even as the anguish of
not knowing remains, the dryness is transfused with a deeper sense
of aspiration.
Thomas Merton expressed this clearly: “True
love and prayer are learned in the moment when prayer has become
impossible and the heart has turned to stone.” When we understand
the cycles of resistance and can wait out a dry period by resting
in the direct physical experience of doubt, we will gradually come
to feel a renewed sense of direction and hope.
Wanting to feel a particular
way
The third major obstacle we encounter in
practice is a deep-seated desire to feel a particular way, whether
calm or clear or spacious or simply free of anxiety. Probably all
of us share the illusion that if we practice long enough and hard
enough, we’ll get what we want: enlightenment, good health, a
satisfying relationship, or whatever else we’re seeking. We can
tell that we’re still harboring this illusion if we believe that
experiencing difficulties or distress means that something is
wrong—specifically, that something is wrong with us. This
persistent belief drives us to do whatever we can to alleviate our
discomfort. We believe deeply that if we just practice harder,
we’re sure to feel better.
We should never underestimate the extent to
which we equate feeling better with being awake. But a key point
about spiritual practice is that we don’t have to feel any
particular way. Nor do we have to be any particular way. All we can
do is experience, and work with, whatever is arising in our life
right now. No matter what is going on or how we feel about it, the
essence of practice is to honestly acknowledge whatever is
happening in the moment and stay present with our experience of it.
In this way we can come to feel a true appreciation for life just
as it is.
There’s a famous Buddhist story about a man
who was shot in the chest with an arrow. The pain was great, but
the Buddha pointed out to the man how much greater the pain would
be if he had been shot with a second arrow in the exact same spot.
What this teaching suggests is that however painful or
disappointing our experience may be, adding the second arrow of our
judgmental thoughts about it will only deepen the pain and lead to
greater suffering.
If, for example, I wake up not feeling well,
adding the judgment “This shouldn’t be happening to me” will only
make me feel much worse. The countermeasure to judging is to move
out of the mental world and our thoughts about what’s happening,
and into the physical realm and what we’re actually feeling in the
moment. Judgments are based on ideals or expectations, and these
thought-based pictures are at least one step removed from what is
real. Coming back to what is, minus our thought-based pictures, is
a step toward freedom.
When we can see through our deep-seated desire
to feel a particular way and realize that we don’t have to feel
different in order to be free, we can experience the equanimity
that comes with staying truly present with what is.
Fully grasping the three obstacles that we’re
sure to encounter on the spiritual path—misunderstanding the depth
of waking sleep, underestimating resistance, and wanting to feel a
particular way—is the essential foundation for learning how to work
with them effectively. And working with them, in turn, will take us
to the heart of what it means to be free.