Path to Freedom Retreat
July, 2003
Before my weekend retreat started, I spent some time on my cushion in dzogchen meditation. I then wrote this short poem, perhaps as advice to myself for a successful retreat:
These dreams are too limited,
only a drop of dew
to a vast ocean of
possibility
These judgements and
observations too
are like dreams.
Let them go.
The Foundation
I like to think of the Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche as my first Buddhist teacher. He escaped from Tibet in 1959 when he was twenty and came to America in 1970.
His book "Shambhala, Way of the Sacred Warrior" was the first Buddhist text that I read when I was 14 years old. Then I gobbled up all of his books that I could find, followed his vipassana meditation instruction, and would sit on the family patio and practice. Even though I never met him, I was deeply sad when I learned of his death in 1987.
When I moved to Boston, I attended my first weekend long meditation retreat. The subject was "Ordinary Magic", experiencing the magic inherent in life even when it is uncomfortable. The teacher of this course, Pema Chodron, was outstanding. She was a senior student of the Vidyadhara Rinpoche.
Now many years later, Pema Chodron is a well-known author. She comes to Berkeley each year to teach city retreats and weekends. I feel incredibly fortunate and grateful that I could sit with her again this weekend.
Instead of retelling the teachings of her retreat verbatim, I'll describe what I learned and what examples from my own life related. This is to share them in an authentic way for me.
The bubble
I live in a bubble of my own creation. This bubble is my sense of safety, my comfort zone, my feeling that I basically know what will happen from moment to moment and that I can control things. Often, this bubble is popped simply by a world that doesn't follow my script. Once that bubble pops, I rush to recreate it. Living without the bubble is really uncomfortable.
Sometimes the bubbles are negative. I say to myself, "I'm not really so good at that" and I no longer have to wonder if I'll succeed or fail or if I should try to do something that is uncertain for me. I just concede and I no longer have to live in an unsure, risky place.
Often my bubbles are positive. I daydream about a successful outcome over and over when I'm nervous about some class I'm about to teach or some new things I'm going to try.
But the bubbles always pop, when this unpredictable world doesn't quite go my way. That happens a lot, especially when I include other peoples behavior like driving or how they treat people. My bubbles pop and I recreate them so quickly now (as an experienced modern multi-tasking adult) that I don't even notice when I do it.
Playing with bubbles
So what's so bad about bubbles? Living without one is uncomfortable, so let's build better bubbles and live comfortable longer. Well, the first problem is they're a short-term solution to my discomfort and I'm really interested in a longer-term solution. Treating the symptom instead of the root cause is never smart. And second they tend to get more rigid and pop more easily as I get older. They're like an itch. Scratch the itch and it just gets stronger after the immediate relief goes away. But we always scratch, because it feels good.
The smarter way to deal with an itch is to resist that temptation to scratch and do something else. So there's nothing inherently wrong with bubbles or scratching - it's a natural reaction - but there might be smarter ways to deal with the underlying discomfort if we're aware of what we're doing.
The approach we learned this weekend for getting smarter about our itches and bubbles was two fold. First, get more aware of the whole process. If you can see what you're doing, instead of just habitually scratching that itch, then you have a hope of resisting the temptation and doing something else. That awareness is a good first step, and our approach was both shamatha vipassana meditation and also some clever instructions on the nature of the process - so moment to moment in our day we could look for clues and warning signs. Then, armed with a better understanding of this bubble building and itch scratching, we received instructions on doing something else.
Is meditation necessary for all this? No! It's just a tool for increasing awareness of our internal process. I personally recommend sitting though, because it's a darn good tool for this. But you can also just practice moment to moment, being mindful in your routine and checking in on your internal process and what feels uncomfortable.
Making bubbles
It's interesting to watch my bubbles form. They're usually too quick for me to see. But in a few cases I've been able to see much of the process.
The most basic example for me is unease or uncertainty: not knowing what come next. That's the most fundamental 'itch' that I build bubbles to deal with. Even though that's the truth of life, and we don't really know what's going to happen next, I like to delude myself constantly that it's not the case. I construct an idea of what comes next and imagine it and feel that it's a solid, concrete reality that's about to occur. It's comforting to have a model for the world that works. That model and the thoughts about it are the bubble, having a sense that things are solid and predictable is the bubble, that's how I scratch the uncertainty itch. And I've made a really good habit of it.
But there are many other types of itches and they build on each other. Once that uncertainty 'itch' gets started, I start constructing more ideas of how things are 'supposed' to be and how they should be. These create more itches that I scratch in a habitual variety of ways.
Driving a car is really fertile ground for this, I can have a hundred opinions about how other people are supposed to drive just on my way to work each day. I even have little commentaries going about how light or heavy the traffic is and why that might be. All bubbles because I don't know if it's going to be a long, boring drive or an effortless, easy one.
Other drivers can hook my thought processes easily. I don't really have any say in how they're driving. And I can't predict what they're going to do. But I get ideas about how they should be behaving, all designed to guard me against this low level uneasiness about the situation. And when they don't match my expectations, then I build even stronger bubbles like, "what an asshat, he's going to kill someone someday." This makes me feel better in the short-term, because now I've labeled this person who isn't meeting my expectations. I don't know them from Adam but I've condemned them as a attempted murderer. But the more I do this the bitterer I become as a driver, and the quicker I build more little bubbles.
Popping them on purpose
So I said earlier that bubbles were ok, but there's a smarter way to deal with all this unease. Unfortunately it's not a comfortable path to take. I think it's better in the long run but it's not the path of least resistance. If it were easy to live without them, this would be a common alternative. But the bubbles feel really good in the short term.
Sometimes I pop open my email/phone gadget when I'm alone at a restaurant so I don't have to feel uncomfortable solo, and I read new emails or play a game of chess to fill the time. Sometimes I shop for extra items in the store, even though I really just want a frozen pizza, because I don't want to be perceived as a poor bachelor without the inclination to actually cook something healthy. The discomfort of the situation comes up, and the story line begins in my head about being alone or a bachelor, and I even act out the story line sometimes in these ways. It would be much more difficult to live without the small comfort and just buy the single pizza and sit in a restaurant by myself without anyone to talk to or anything to do - unsure of what or who to look at.
But making bubbles like these really make life less workable in the long run. By the time I'm old I'll really have bought into the stories I've told myself about my cooking skills or what it's like to be alone and I'll be less willing to go out to eat when I'm alone or try to make something in the kitchen. Or I'll be less willing to take a cooking class and changing my life. The belief in this self image will reinforce and I'll be less able to live without those bubbles; less flexible, less open to new experiences; more set in my ways.
When I first moved to California I was terribly lonely and homesick. I didn't know many people for the first month. But the world was also a wild and interesting place. Each weekend I would pick a new direction to drive and I would just explore. Once I looked at a hilltop in the distance and just tried to get there, but found interesting diversions on the way and was overjoyed.
But after the years I started to get more settled. I knew where my 'favorite' restaurants were and I was much less willing to go somewhere new. I had opinions about certain neighborhoods from things I had heard, and some I avoided out of fear or scoffed at because they were snooty or full of shallow people so I believed. All ideas in my head designed to make the world make more sense and simplified.
This year I started to notice the trend. I was doing nothing new, and I missed the wide-open possibility of when I first moved here. Nothing had changed but me. I was no longer open. Because of that unease in not knowing, I had slowly built up ideas and opinions, habits and shortcuts, and I didn't need to take any risks or go places unfamiliar anymore.
One radical way to get back to that excitement and newness that I missed would be to move to a new city. But before long the same familiarity and opinions - my bubbles - would be back. And I'd have to pick up and move again. Or, I could perhaps instead try to figure out this process of building bubbles and closing myself off to the world around me and pop them myself.
See the bubbles
A good way to see a bubble is to notice the symptoms. When you feel yourself righteous and opinioned, that's a sign at you've built a good one. When you feel any strong emotion, especially fear and anger and jealousy, stop for a second and think back to what got you there. You'll find one still intact or maybe even a bubble that was popped, leaving your soft underside exposed and you feeling deep down uneasy or unsure.
An interesting one for me is playing with the statement "I'm not ok". This is at the root of many of my bubbles I suspect, when I sit with that idea it feels familiar. Occasionally I think I'm not attractive, or confident, or outgoing... those thoughts all bring up a similar feeling of not being perfect or how I should be. As I explore that feeling on purpose, I'm hoping I'll notice the different thoughts that get me there and can just see them for what they are - bubbles rooting in that feeling of unease but ultimately making life less flexible.
But to misquote Stuart Smalley, I am ok and so are you. I like to tell myself I'm not ok. Maybe it started as a short-term relief to not have to deal with some stressful situation or I was inundated with that message, but I wholeheartedly believe it now.
Awareness meditation practice has helped me develop insight, so it's a little easier to see the process unfold. But most of the time I don't see it, I just get carried away until I'm in full-blown frustration or big deal emotion. At that point it's easier to see that I bought into some storyline or popped some bubble or series of bubbles that I was using for comfort, but it's almost too late to stop the process from continuing or to see all the root issues that were involved. Ah well. It's going to happen a lot. The big issues just get us swept away in all that energy so quickly.
When to practice
Perhaps it's only possible at first to see the small issues as they arise. These small, let's call them bourgeois issues, are how we build up skill in seeing the larger ones. It's not a big deal if the sugar dispenser is often empty at the coffee shop we go to, but that's perfect material for us to start working with. See if you can see when the small frustrations come up. Or the guy at our dry cleaner who's always rude, see if we can notice that discomfort and instead of habitually reacting to it just notice how it feels as our reactions come up.
Susan Chapman at Gampo Abbey came up with this advice for what emotional states to work with at first: Red light, green light, flashing yellow light. In green light mind we're open and receptive. In red light mind we're full blown caught up in something. We're upset or angry or lost in a daydream trying to run away from serious discomfort. It's not likely that you'll be able to work in a red light state of mind. And that's ok.
But flashing yellow light might be the best place to practice. Flashing yellow light mind is a warning sign that red light mind might be coming soon. It includes things like disappointment, boredom, peeved, miffed, nostalgia, in a huff, having a hankering, cravings, having your feelings hurt. These are discomforts when your ego bubble has popped, but you're at a warning stage still. If you can heed the warning you can catch it before it becomes a red light.
Interrupt the process
When you see the feelings arise, before the story line beings, it's really easy to short circuit the process and head it off before the really big issue energy starts. The empty sugar dispenser is just a mild discomfort; I'll have to interrupt the cute girl behind the counter who doesn't know I exist (oops, another ego bubble...) to get more. But that's not a big deal really.
Even if I catch it later after the discomfort and into the story line about "how the darn thing is never full and why doesn't someone who works there actually keep an eye on it or how expensive would it be for them to put two dispensers out" and just stop mid-sentence and notice the present moment: where I am and how my body feels and how I'm breathing and what's going on in the room. Then I've successfully returned from the story line to the present moment and interrupted it before all the big issue aggravation arrived.
That idea of returning to the present moment is super powerful for me. Another useful tool: just noticing how you're breathing in the midst of small issues during the day as a way to drop the story line and return to the present. It interrupts this bubble creation and popping process mid-stream. But it's hard not to go right back to making bubbles even after noticing the breath. It's comfortable in a bubble; we want to go there. It's sane in a way to seek comfort (just not as smart as we want to be.)
One approach to avoid the bubble might be in welcoming, even steering toward the underlying discomfort.
Welcome the discomfort
Where does this process interruption leave us though? Sitting in the root of our discomfort. The sugar is empty and there's this person I have trouble talking with that I'll need to face and potentially embarrass myself by stuttering. The rude guy at the cleaners is yelling at his wife again and I'm sitting there with the pain of all people who get yelled at aching in my chest and I'm choosing not to build some comforting, snide opinion of him but instead sit in that soft spot of sadness. Someone changes lanes in front of me and it feels reckless and dangerous and I sit with that feeling of danger instead of calling him an ass and getting angry.
That soft spot is something to welcome. When I feel this process unfolding, if I remember I can ask the question "where is the soft spot in this?" and if I can connect to that then I'm free of the story line and I've found the root discomfort. I'm starting to work with the root issue instead of just scratching the itch. And things are more workable because instead of lots of big issue energy I just have small unease and uncertainty. That soft spot is always there anyway. By touching it I'm experiencing what's going on directly and by not trying to cover it up with a story line. I won't have as many big issues or long-term hardening and rigidity in my heart instead.
The teachings on these bubbles and itch scratching tendencies go further though. I'm starting to see some of this myself but I have a long way to go. The teachings say that the more we get ok with the underlying unease and learn to sit in that soft spot, the easier it gets. Eventually it's not hard at all, and it just makes us more appreciative of the shared humanity we all have. The soft spot is something we all share.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche said that the underlying unease is inherent to any dualistic view of the world (me separate from everything else) so it will always be there as long as you have a self-image based perspective of things. But he also said that connecting to the soft spot is the path to freedom from sewing seeds of future suffering. And a beauty of this practice is there is plenty to work with - if we have a typical human life we're reacting to itches, building sand castles of idea to comfort ourselves, and getting upset about things in small ways all day. Each of these is an opportunity to find the soft spot at the root of them and practice being ok with that unease and tenderness instead of reacting to it. No need to seek lamas in caves, all the material we need to work with is right here in our everyday discomfort.
So if I had to boil down the weekend retreat to one piece of advice it would be, "Use smarter methods to get comfort. Touch the soft spot instead of running away from it."