I’ve been really struggling to formulate this question. Sometimes I have answers, or bits of answers, but they float off and slip away and I'm left none the wiser. And when I read back through it there are bits that scream answers out at me (“Goals! Expectations! Grasping!”) and other bits that are ripe for a “Zen semantics” take-down… and it makes me feel as if I should go straight back to Buddhism 101. But what I know at a theoretical level has become awfully cloudy on the cushion, so I’ve tried to just put something on paper and hope it makes some sense.
I have for the past couple of years noticed that whenever I increase my practice (or indeed do other things to ‘improve’ how I live) I become considerably more aware – and afraid – of my immortality. I’ve left it too late. I should have done all this sooner. Panic. More panic.
At an intellectual level I’ve got a pretty good awareness/understanding of impermanence (hard to avoid as a Buddhist, really) but when, for whatever reason, my practice drops off I find myself able to co-exist with this truth quite happily. But as soon as I start to sit regularly, or try to eat better, or exercise, or make an effort in another area of my life I find myself horribly aware of my own end hurtling towards me, and of how insignificant it all is in the long run anyway. I’m going to die, who knows when, and I’ve left it too late to do… er… whatever, and in 100 years it’ll all be irrelevant anyway. A horrible horrible fear of time running out (and I’m only 42
) combined with a nihilism/fatalism that really doesn’t seem like 'me'.
And it is so painful! More painful, in fact, than the pain that (Buddhistically speaking) I am supposed to be feeling when I don’t face up to truths about the nature of existence. It hurts less to sit in front of the TV and eat crisps and wish I was a thin PhD black belt and guitar virtuoso than it does to get up and do something ‘better’ and get smacked in the face by the gut-churning fear that perhaps none of it matters anyway or that there’s no point if I’m going to pop my clogs one day anyway.
So what on earth is my motivation for sitting with this pain? At times like this even the dull gnawing suffering of constantly wishing things were different seems to be a lesser suffering compared to the acute pain I experience when I’m practicing and ostensibly, on some level, happier with things as they are.
I’m not even fully sure what I’m asking here. I think: why do I find it MORE painful once I start to move in the right direction? And why, WHY, do I choose to continue down the path and not just go back to the familiar dull dissatisfaction of everyday dukkha?
Ouch.
Gassho,
Libby
sattoday
I have for the past couple of years noticed that whenever I increase my practice (or indeed do other things to ‘improve’ how I live) I become considerably more aware – and afraid – of my immortality. I’ve left it too late. I should have done all this sooner. Panic. More panic.
At an intellectual level I’ve got a pretty good awareness/understanding of impermanence (hard to avoid as a Buddhist, really) but when, for whatever reason, my practice drops off I find myself able to co-exist with this truth quite happily. But as soon as I start to sit regularly, or try to eat better, or exercise, or make an effort in another area of my life I find myself horribly aware of my own end hurtling towards me, and of how insignificant it all is in the long run anyway. I’m going to die, who knows when, and I’ve left it too late to do… er… whatever, and in 100 years it’ll all be irrelevant anyway. A horrible horrible fear of time running out (and I’m only 42
) combined with a nihilism/fatalism that really doesn’t seem like 'me'.And it is so painful! More painful, in fact, than the pain that (Buddhistically speaking) I am supposed to be feeling when I don’t face up to truths about the nature of existence. It hurts less to sit in front of the TV and eat crisps and wish I was a thin PhD black belt and guitar virtuoso than it does to get up and do something ‘better’ and get smacked in the face by the gut-churning fear that perhaps none of it matters anyway or that there’s no point if I’m going to pop my clogs one day anyway.
So what on earth is my motivation for sitting with this pain? At times like this even the dull gnawing suffering of constantly wishing things were different seems to be a lesser suffering compared to the acute pain I experience when I’m practicing and ostensibly, on some level, happier with things as they are.
I’m not even fully sure what I’m asking here. I think: why do I find it MORE painful once I start to move in the right direction? And why, WHY, do I choose to continue down the path and not just go back to the familiar dull dissatisfaction of everyday dukkha?
Ouch.
Gassho,
Libby
sattoday
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