As someone who’s tended to gravitate towards practices, teachings, and teachers that have a grounded, direct, and honest approach to life, I’m often inspired by recalling an exchange I once read between a meditation teacher and his sick disciple.
As the disciple lay there terribly ill, he looked toward his teacher for reassuring words of comfort, only to have him say, “You’ll either get better, or you’ll die.”
The teacher had cut straight to the heart of the matter; essentially saying: This is what’s true and I refuse to delude you into believing otherwise. Of course, the teacher knew his disciple well enough to know he could handle such a direct understanding, but I’ve found that getting the occasional heavy dose of reality can wake us up, guide us toward an authentic way of relating to life, maximize well-being, and minimize suffering.
If it weren’t for the heavenly messengers — real-life visions of aging, sickness, and death, from which he’d long been sheltered — shattering the Buddha-to-be’s limited view of reality, he would’ve never sought freedom, and we wouldn’t have his teachings today. Sometimes all we need is a heavy dose of truth to help push us in a new direction and to find out what’s truly important.
Our views create our reality.
How we choose to see the world determines how we live and act within it, and unfortunately more often than not our views are distorted and not in line with how things are. This gap between reality and our misperceptions of it can generate a lifetime of unnecessary suffering, stress, and sorrow.
Take, for example, the view that we should be happy all the time; that life ought to always feel good. When we hold this view, we see happy moments as positive, successful, or as a sign telling us we’re doing something right. Life is going according to our plan and we believe this is how it should always be. Likewise, when things are going bad, we feel like something is wrong, or that we’re being punished. It can feel like the universe is out to get us and we suffer tremendously.
But if we truly understood the truth of impermanence, and that life will inevitably have its pains and difficulties, then we’d understand that sometimes we’ll feel good, and sometimes not. We wouldn’t have all the unnecessary suffering that comes with trying to hold onto the pleasant and pushing away the unpleasant. We could simply enjoy the good times when they arrive and learn to let them go when they change, as they surely will. We could also better endure the bad times, knowing that they too will pass. We could experience our lives, regardless of the flavor of the moment, just the way they are without getting thrown off balance or being limited by our conditioned reactions.
When we see life as it is, we see that it’s impossible to find freedom and peace if we’re caught up in a wrong view. We also understand that how we view things affects every part of our lives, so by shifting our views we can directly affect not only how we feel, but more importantly how we choose to live.
When our views don’t match reality, it can be like banging our heads against the wall — hoping things were otherwise, while wondering why our heads hurt so much. I’m reminded of my favorite secular explanation of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths:
Shit happens;
We make it worse;
We don’t have to;
There’s a path not to.
Coincidentally, the Buddhist “path not to,” aka the Eightfold Path, also begins with committing to Wise, or Right, Views. Let’s start with the first view:
Freedom and change ARE possible.
The good news this view offers is that, yes, you can change. Modern neuroscience has proven that you can alter the neural makeup of your brain by how you pay attention and respond to what’s arising. This is called neuroplasticity. Put simply: the way you relate to your life moment-by-moment matters, and where you find yourself today is simply the result of what you’ve been doing up until this point. Just like with anything in life, what you practice at and do repeatedly, often you get better at. What might you have been practicing? Letting go? Patience? Worry? Aversion? Anxiety? Addictive craving?
Freedom and change ARE possible, and if you don’t believe that, you will likely find yourself stuck with the same patterns, behaviors, and ways of being that led you to be stuck. It’s an unwise, or wrong, view. But once you believe that it’s possible to change, you’ve already planted the seed to make it happen; you’ve allowed that possibility to become a reality.
So if you don’t like the results you’re getting with how you’re currently living, then maybe that’s a cue to start doing things differently. Or as one Buddhist lojong, or “mind training,” slogan puts it, Don’t be so predictable!
So if freedom and change are possible, why do most of us continue to stay stuck? Why aren’t we all practicing ways of being that lead to peace and well-being? The answer is our conditioned, unconscious, deeply ingrained behavior patterns, many of which developed during childhood. As children we learned how to be in the world through our relationships with our parents and siblings. We also quickly figured out which emotions were preferred or allowed and which ones weren’t, dissociating from what wasn’t tolerated and clinging to and maintaining what was. We also created habits to avoid or keep us safe from feelings and situations that might have been too overwhelming for us.
These habits, which typically are modes of escaping our lives, become solidified early on and become who we think we are. (Key word: think.) Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck used to call it “the substitute life.” An example of these patterns of the substitute life could be seeking attention due to an older sibling getting more attention than you, or a persistent yearning for approval due to highly critical parents. Or it could be the result of trauma and loss, or a manifestation of other unmet needs. Regardless of what causes them, we all have patterns we act out (or better put, that act us out) unconsciously and that cause us to react in familiar, predictable ways and which become especially prevalent when we encounter discomfort.
These behaviors usually end up defining who we think we are and become the lens through which we see the world. They may have served a purpose in the past or kept us safe at some point, but even if we’ve outgrown them, we can cling to them out of desperation and familiarity.
The view that freedom and change are possible reminds us that we needn’t limit ourselves to this conditioning, and can instead, with wisdom, practice, and understanding, respond freely and appropriately to the present circumstances. Jack Kornfield often says, “Suffering is not the end of the story,” and he’s right, it doesn’t have to be. There’s a freedom that’s available right now that we can rest in. From that place of freedom, we can reprogram how we meet our lives. Our unwholesome patterns, difficult feelings, and limiting storylines don’t have to define us. They are our substitute life and aren’t who we really are.
But you need to experience this truth for yourself. The good news is you’re already free right now to see this. You don’t have to complete ten years of therapy or do thousands of hours of meditation to become free.
You may be thinking it can’t be that easy. How could I possibly change after years and years of conditioning? I don’t feel free at all! Try this simple exercise:
Take a moment to pause.
Close your eyes and simply notice what’s going on in your mind. See if it’s calm or busy, focused or restless, wandering in the past or future or present with the experience of the moment. Notice how effortless it is for you to be aware of what’s happening in your mind.
As thoughts arise, give them a label and let them be. If a worried thought arises simply label it, “a worried thought.” If your mind is completely restless just say to yourself, “A restless mind is like this.” Honestly label every thought as it arises and observe them all as they come and go.
Watch the flow of thoughts in this way for a few minutes. Then, open your eyes.
This short exercise shows that awareness is possible right now. And if we can be aware of our awareness, then we know we always have a choice: to either follow our thoughts, emotions, or moods — or let them go and respond differently.
The ability to change habits of mind is a great tool and learning to let go of unhelpful states while cultivating helpful ones is a large part of this view. And it’s possible to take this view of freedom to an even deeper level. Rather than merely changing our unskillful habits we can use this view to begin uprooting their very causes so they no longer arise. To understand this level of freedom we need to gain a wise view of our sense of self.
The “Three Marks of Existence”
In Buddhism, not understanding who we are is called ignorance, denoting an innocent misunderstanding of reality and mistaken sense of identity: that we have a solid, separate self. Helpful in comprehending all this is the Buddhist notion of the “three marks of existence.” These three marks are the basic characteristics shared by every single thing in the entire universe. They are:
Anicca, or impermanence
Dukkha, often translated as suffering but perhaps best understood here as a pervasive sense of unsatisfactoriness
Anatta, or non-self, also known as interdependence
Together, these offer us a skillful way to see through the delusions of ignorance; a strategy to release grasping which ultimately reduces our suffering. Let’s explore them.
The first mark of existence is the truth of impermanence — an obvious truth of life, and central to Buddhist thought. In the Dhammapada the Buddha says, “Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things.”
As the saying goes, the only unchanging law in the universe is that everything changes. Understanding the fluid, flowing nature of reality can not only help us loosen our grip but can also give us deeper insights into the nature of self.
When asked the question, Who are you?, most of us would identify with our bodies, emotions, and the content of our minds. But is this true? When we really investigate it, we see that everything that we take to be “who we are” is constantly changing. Yet we talk about ourselves as if it weren’t. We tend to grab on to these fleeting experiences of life, taking them personally and labeling them as “me” or “mine” — without really looking to see if that’s the case. Yet, all day long there are sensations, thoughts, moods, emotions, sights, sounds, tastes, and smells arising and falling away. If these were “who you truly were,” wouldn’t you disappear when they did? (How many thoughts, emotions, desires, sensations, and moods have you experienced in your life? How many have lasted?)
You may be wondering how this understanding leads to freedom. As we begin to understand our impermanence, and our ignorance, we can bring more ease to the suffering of life. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been caught in frustration over something or someone, and just the simple reminder that this is an impersonal, impermanent reaction helps me relax into the situation and respond more appropriately and skillfully. More often than not, I’m able to be with any aversion or rage until things cool down, which they always do.
This ability to stay with what is, no matter how uncomfortable it may be, and realize that the experience is not as solid, personal, and unchanging as may seem, is what leads us to freedom. It allows us to soften into the moment and rest in an inner spaciousness that can hold the experience until it changes.
It can be difficult. Sometimes it can feel as if you are sitting in the center of a raging fire. But as T.S. Eliot once said, we are “to be redeemed from fire by fire.” Or to quote Jack Kornfield again: “Go ahead, light your candles and burn your incense and ring your bells and call out to God, but watch out, because God will come and He will put you on His anvil and fire up His forge and beat you and beat you until He turns brass into pure gold.”
By simply pausing and seeing your reactivity as “not-me” or “not-mine” as the Buddha instructed his followers, you begin to experience what it’s like to step out of me-world into a vast spaciousness of freedom. Me-world thrives on wanting things to work out a certain way. Our reactivity is literally the mind, rooted in this illusion of a solid self, trying to have things go its own way. But the Buddha offered a different path, one free from the grips of ignorance and reactivity, and the good news is, you too, can experience this freedom.
The second mark of existence, dukkha, is typically understood as “suffering.” But again, it might better to think of it as dissatisfaction. Because all things are impermanent, nothing is reliable; there are no guarantees and nothing in this world can ever truly satisfy or fulfill us. If we try to grasp on to that which is ungraspable, suffering follows.
We could spend our whole lives trying to maintain certain situations or feelings, or hoping our friends and partners stay exactly the same, but it will be to no avail. All these will change. But through understanding the impermanent, unreliable nature of things we’re cultivating a wiser relationship to how life actually is. When happiness comes, we’re able to fully embrace and enjoy it, and we’re able to let it go and embrace and appreciate the next moment, regardless of its flavor.
The third and final mark of existence, no-self, can be a most complex teaching, and quite transformative as you realize it more and more deeply.
I think what’s most important to understand with this mark of existence is that suffering and reactivity are rooted in our sense of self, and if we’re able to see the content of our body and mind without any self behind them — “not-me” or “not-mine” — we will grasp less and less at them, in turn reducing the cause of our suffering.
As said above, I relate to this mark of existence as less of a metaphysical truth about reality and more of a practice in letting go. It’s not that we don’t exist, but rather, we don’t exist the way we think we do, and when we hold on to the changing content of our experience — that which is impersonal and impermanent — we suffer more.
Rather than “no-self,” I often translate this mark of existence as “interdependence.” In other words, our sense of self is a bunch of different causes and conditions constantly interacting and changing. Our idea of who we are is made up of interdependent elements that aren’t really us at all.
There’s nothing (including us) in the universe that exists independently on its own. A single blade of grass may, for example, seem to. But, upon real investigation we see that it needs soil, nutrients, water, a planet with an atmosphere, a sun to bring it light and warmth, and on and on and on.
You and I are no different than that blade of grass. Everything that makes up who we think we are: body, feelings, thoughts, emotions, etc., are all conditioned and are dependent on other conditions (each having their own causes and conditions) to exist.
Through our meditation practice our minds get more and more still, and this assists us in having deep experiences of our interconnected nature.
As we become more aware of the true nature of our experience and see for ourselves how grasping causes suffering, we begin to see that who we think we are is a very convincing illusion, and how this hewing to our misunderstandings of reality makes our life so much more painful and difficult.
All This is About Your Freedom
Freedom isn’t some distant prize after years of Buddhist practice. It exists here and now, right in the middle of the messiness of everyday life. We could even say that freedom is who we — you! — already are at the deepest level. We can change our lives because of this freedom — as long as we’re willing to pay attention and willing to rest and live from this place of freedom.
Can we — Can you? Can I? — be courageous enough to open to life exactly as it is, and use that as a place of practice? Countless meditators before us prove that we can. I wish you well on your journey.
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