Circumstances turn the world upside down, and you find yourself standing in a room you barely recognize thinking I don’t know how to do this.
What is this?
[Painful scream]
I’ve been thinking a lot in recent days about one of my favorite quotes. “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.” The man who wrote that was Frederick Buechner a theologian, and I don’t know what his understanding of Buddhism was, but it certainly sums up the Buddha’s teaching about the eight worldly conditions, sometimes also called the Eight Worldly Winds --
Gain and loss, Pleasure and pain,
Praise and censure, Fame and disgrace
Beautiful and terrible, and just the way the world is, and we feel stress and dissatisfaction and anxiety. How ironic, or serendipitous, that this is the first noble truth of Dukkha – the way the world is, beautiful and terrible.
We want more things and more money, pleasure, praise and recognition, and we want to keep it! We would really rather avoid or distract ourselves, and sometimes just run away from the pain, and loss, being told we didn’t measure up, or hit the mark. I was working on this Dharma talk for two nights and had written exactly 2 ½ excruciating pages, and all I could do was worry because I felt so off track and just at a loss. So I called my teacher and told him I was overthinking and just about to freak out, which he thought was wonderful, by the way. But he said, well, so what if you do it wrong, and then afterward I say, well you did it wrong.
I said I don’t like to be told I’m wrong! I want to get it right.
Exactly nothing had happened, and I was feeling all the Dukkha. It’s such a part of the reality of being alive. In the Lokavipatti Sutta, the Buddha says, the winds of worldly conditions spin after the world and the world spins after them.
We find ourselves blown around between gain and loss, pleasure and pain. Chasing after fame and praise, or trying to avoid blame and disgrace. We become consumed with the stress and anxiety of arising and passing conditions. This is the second noble truth. Craving and grasping is the cause of our stress and dissatisfaction.
Without understanding and discernment, we spin around and around, buffeted by the winds of inconstant and fickle conditions, because of our own actions, or the actions of others, or circumstances we have no control over. I’m sure you know what that feels like -- stuck in cycles of clinging, pushing away, grasping and trying to hold on, pretending things are not the way they are, hurting when we lose what we like, and hurting ourselves and other people when we don’t like what we get. It feels hot, grimy, tight. It feels like you can barely breathe or even make a move.
My husband got sick in late winter of 2016 . . . pain, fever, anemia, blood infection, 9 days in the hospital. We were struggling through each day and each new bit of bad news. Colon cancer, metastasized to his liver, stage four. I was splitting my time between the hospital and the doctors and the procedures, still going to work and trying to keep up, and spending every night alone at home with just our little dog who didn’t understand where her other person was. I would lie down to try to sleep and find I couldn’t breathe. Fortunately, I had been sitting with our mindfulness and meditation group for about 10 or 11 years, so I had a few tools in my Buddhist tool bag. I would sit up, and tell myself just one breath. Feel your body, just one more breath. I can be the space for this, one more breath.
Thank you, meditation cushion! And all those hours of just following my breath, being there for the practice, no matter how unsuccessful I felt, the practice was there for me. I didn’t have to be at the whim of those worldly winds.
How noble and wise was the Buddha’s teaching on this, because the sutta also addresses this, the third noble truth – there is a way to end this unease and distress. The poetic verses at the end of the Lokavipatti Sutta speak about release from the struggle against the constantly changing worldly conditions:
Knowing this, the wise person, mindful,
Ponders these changing conditions.
Desirable things don’t charm the mind,
Undesirable ones bring no resistance.
When we cultivate the ability to reflect and discern, we slow the spinning and the stress of grasping. We know impermanence IS the basic ground we stand on.
How do we cultivate wisdom and the ability to discern? We meditate. We sit with ourselves and our minds, and we learn to pay attention. We practice patience, diligence and gentle restraint. We slow down our habits and impulses to spin after our thoughts. We find a little more clarity, a little more ease, to meet the world right where we are, just as it is. Can I be the space for this? Whatever it is whether it feels good or not. Can I be that space, to meet my life just where I am and, as my teacher says, trust that the next moment will be workable?
This is why part of our practice is also to cultivate loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity. They are called Immeasurable or Limitless qualities for good reason, because they help us build our capacity for love and goodwill toward all sentient beings without limit. The Buddha talked about these qualities specifically in the Kalama Sutta because they’re so important to how we cultivate wisdom and discernment, and the ability to hold space and to wish others well in ALL moments. It’s the ALL part that takes effort. To wish others well in all moments whether those moments are painful, sad, or unpleasant, or happy, full of ease or very fortunate, or just plain tedious and dull. For that reason, to wish others well in ALL moments, we must develop a steadfast and clear-seeing mind, one that gives us the ability to hold our center, to hold space for what’s happening, and to accommodate circumstances without losing our equilibrium. Which is the abode of Equanimity.
Equanimity enables us to be relaxed and alert enough to bring the aspirations and appropriate responses of Lovingkindness, Compassion and Appreciative Joy to the people we encounter and the situations in which we find ourselves. Without Equanimity, we are more likely to be buffeted by the eight worldly winds, and less able to recognize what is the right relationship, the right situation, the right function.
To develop Equanimity in order to support and encourage the other three qualities, we start with a sense of curiosity and willingness to see, to know ourselves and trust ourselves, and to learn to hold space and stay connected. Wishing others well in all moments.
My husband’s health situation has given me a lot of opportunities to practice, and we’ve spent quite a bit of time in hospitals and oncology offices and emergency rooms since that first terrible 9 days. In fact we were just back there earlier this week, waiting for Mike’s name to be called, no idea what to expect when we finally met the doctor. And I felt my chest tighten up, and the nervous energy in my gut, but rather than getting caught up in those feelings and the winds spinning my own circumstances, I thought about how everyone around me was going through something hard too. And what I could do while we all waited for our turn, was to sit still and breathe, pay attention, wish everyone ease, keep my thoughts close, and be right where I was, rather than in the past or the future.
Circumstances turn the world upside down, and you find yourself standing in a room you barely recognize thinking I don’t know how to do this.
What is this?
White walls, faces of Buddhas, papers on the table [smiles, deep breath, bow]
This talk was given at Lotus Heart Zen Temple, Oneida, NY on August 3, 2024