Denying Reality (talk + meditation)

“To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality” -Sengcan, Trust in Mind
This is a talk about reality and the way we try to hide from the truth, followed by a zen style meditation. This was originally shared on my podcast "Sharpening the Mind"

Transcript

Hello, I'm Daniel. I'm going to read a verse from this text, Trust in Mind, Today and then I'm going to comment on that verse and then after I comment on the verse I will lead a meditation. So this is the verse I want to read to you from Trust in Mind. To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality, To assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality, To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality, To assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. So, What does that mean? Denying reality of things, I think there's some different ways we could think about this. And one way I want to address that's not really the way I want to talk about it is just in traditional Buddhist contexts, Sometimes people talk about this thing called emptiness. And that is just nothing exists on its own, Nothing exists independently of everything else. And some people feel inclined to take that to the extreme and say, Actually, Nothing exists period. And what is the text saying? It's saying don't deny that things exist. That's ridiculous. But I have a more real world interpretation of why that verse could be useful to us. Denying the reality of things. We deny the reality of things sometimes. Especially with our self talk, When we say things like I can't handle this, We're denying the reality of things. When we say things like, I can't leave this relationship, Or this job or this situation, When we tell ourselves we can't leave, We're denying the reality of things because the reality is we can leave, We can leave, We can change our lives, We have a lot of potential to change our lives, We just sometimes think we don't. So we're denying the reality of things when we say things like I'm not good enough, I can't handle this, I can't make this change to my life, This is too hard for me, I have to give in to this temptation, All those things, We're denying reality. We're denying reality and all those forms of negative self talk. We're denying reality. And also in other ways when we maybe do something that's not good and we tell ourselves either we're oh I'm not going to get caught or if we do something that's not good and we tell ourselves well this is why this thing is okay, This is why it's okay for me to steal this or step on this person, This is why it's okay. We tell ourselves that, We tell ourselves all sorts of things and we're really good at convincing ourselves a lot of the time. So that's what I want to talk about for denying the reality of things. It's just when we tell ourselves things that aren't true, Especially when we tell ourselves something and we know, We know it's not true, We know it's not true. What are some other ones like oh I'll just have one more chip, Right? That sort of thing, That's sort of mine, I love chips but that's what we're talking about. Denying the reality of things is lying to yourself about the world, About the people around you and about yourself. About yourself. So we might have like a very high opinion of ourselves and we think we're the best person we know and we're not wrong ever or we could have a very low opinion of ourselves and think like everybody around me is better than me. And the truth is most of us have both of those things at various times and rarely, Rarely do we have something in the middle with a clear picture of ourselves. Rarely do we have that. We are generally either overestimating how great we are, How right we are all the time or we're just thinking we're the worst. Rarely are we the truth which is somewhere in between those two extremes. So what we want to do, What we're called to do is face reality as it really is and face ourselves as we really are and stop lying to ourselves. Stop lying to ourselves. The truth is that when we do this kind of practice for a while, Eventually we come to a point where it's very hard to keep being dishonest with yourself. At a certain point you can't lie to yourself quite as sincerely as you did before. So you come to a point where rather than doing a bad thing and thinking of a reason why it's not bad, Instead you just acknowledge I'm doing this bad thing because I really want to. And I don't have an excuse because the truth is we make up excuses and we're really good at that. But when we learn how to really face things and how to stop denying reality, Then we've got to stop making excuses and we've got to say, You know, I did this bad thing because I really wanted to. And that's it. I decided not to have self control that day or to not exercise my self control. And that's a tough, It is tough, It is really tough to admit when something's our fault. It's really tough to come to terms with our shortcomings and our strengths. It's tough to come to terms with our strengths too because sometimes we don't put the effort in we could because we think we're not good enough so why try? And when the truth is in some situations we aren't trying because we're lazy, Not because we think we're not good enough. But that's what we tell ourselves. We tell ourselves, You know, I'm not going to try to get that promotion because I'm not good enough. They're going to hire somebody else. But when the truth is no, We're lazy. We don't want to apply for that promotion because applying for a promotion is a pain, Right? And that's another way that we lie to ourselves. We lie to ourselves in all sorts of ways. We are not honest with ourselves. We're not honest with ourselves. And that's why this, This path, This meditation path is a path of radical self honesty because when we pay attention to how our minds work, Then we notice, Oh, I'm feeding myself a lie. I'm feeding myself a lie right now. Then we can then of course decide, Well, Am I going to choose to believe this lie I'm telling myself or am I going to put the lie down and do what needs to be done? Am I going to put the lie down and do what needs to be done? So that's it. I'm going to read it one more time though because I do like it even though it's a little bit hard to talk about. To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality. To assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. We miss everything. Not everything, But we miss a lot of things because we're denying the reality of things. Uh, What's another, There's another thing a lot of us deny. Um, A lot of people like to deny it and that is just that we're getting older and dying. And that's a hard thing to think about. That's a hard thing to talk about really because it's so, Uh, It's universal to the human condition and it's scary. It's scary. Getting older is scary and dying is scary, Right? So I can, I mean, I can see in my own life, Like as my beard's getting more gray, I also noticed like I can't run as fast as I used to. And really in some ways my brain doesn't work as fast as it used to. And that is getting older and that's also moving towards what? My end. And we can do elaborate things to convince ourselves that we're not getting older, Right? That's why people dye their hair and get facelifts and people that have the money for those crazy things die there. Not that dying your hair is crazy, But facelifts, Botox, That sort of thing. Like it's alarming to me, But that's the, What are you doing when you do that? Well, You're denying the reality of things. This, This vessel, This body is getting older. This body is getting older. It's going to keep getting older and there's nothing you can do. I mean, You can take really good care of it and it'll last longer and it's different parts will last longer, But ultimately it's not going to last forever. And we don't like that of course, But that's, That's the truth. That's the reality of things that we are called to face as well. This doesn't last forever, But the truth is actually nothing else does. So why would we think we're different? Right? Why, Why do we feel compelled to wish we were different than literally everything else we see always? Right. But we do, We do. We try to avoid getting older, I think, I think gray hair is beautiful and that's my personal opinion, But it shouldn't have to be beautiful, Right? It shouldn't have to be beautiful. The point is it's happening and you can try to create the perception of slowing it down, But it's happening. So aging, Aging is a reality we can't deny and death is too. Sooner or later, Sooner or later, We're leaving all this behind and that's the reality of things too. And we may not literally tell ourselves literally, I'm going to live forever. We may not literally tell ourselves that, But we sure do put act like it. We sure do act like it. We sure do put things off and think, Oh, I'll do it later. Right? We think that way all the time. And I think I sort of think like, What would you do differently if you were dying? Would you try to live life to the fullest? Would you be nicer to the people around you? Would you make sure your affairs are in order? Make sure you take care of things that need to be done and leave nothing undone. Is that what you would do if you knew you were dying? Because and I'm saying that just to say you are dying. You are dying. We all are. That process started as soon as you came into the world. And that's that. So if we would live differently if we were dying, Then we should live differently. We should try to live more fully. And that's part of what meditation is for. It helps us to live deliberately instead of being on autopilot a lot of the time. Helps us to live deliberately. And that can be really important because when we're on autopilot, When we're just going through the motions and just letting things happen and life's just happening around us, We miss things. We miss things. I've seen before where people say like, It felt like my kid was just born and now they're in college. And that's just an expression, Of course, But also we're not paying attention and we miss things. So some areas of our life, It does seem like it goes by really fast. And if we can learn how to pay attention, This is the path of attention. If we can learn how to pay attention and really be present, Then that won't happen so much. Or at least it might not. Going through life on autopilot is missing life. And what we are learning how to do here is to be more present and to live more fully. Live more fully. Don't you want to live more fully? I've heard that. I don't know where this expression comes from, But I really like it. You can't always add more years to your life, But you can add more life to your years. You can always add more years to your life, But you can add more life to your years. That's what we're talking about here. Let's add more life to our years. Let's do it. So let's do a meditation. I'm going to ring the bell three times and we're going to take three deep breaths and then we're going to do a meditation. We need to sit up as straight as you can. We want to sit up in a way that we're at attention. So if you're in a chair like I'm in right now, Back straight. Don't don't look at me. I'm meditating. Don't do this, But sit up straight. And arrange your legs in a way they won't fall asleep and put your hands in your lap. There's two different forms I recommend and one I call it the bowl. It's one hand on top of the other, Thumbs gently touching. Some people say it matters a lot what hands on top. I disagree. I don't think it matters. Whatever's comfortable. And the other thing I recommend is what's called relaxation. It's just hands on your knees. Do whatever you feel comfortable with. I like to do a nice open practice. I know a lot of people like to do eyes closed practice. I don't think it's good or bad, But I like to do an eyes open practice. So what I'm fixing my attention on is something behind you that's not going to distract me. There's a wall there. And if you have something like that you can fix your attention on, I think that's great. And we'll begin by taking three deep breaths. Now I want you to bring attention to your breathing. The way breath comes into and out of your body. Can make our focus our nose, Where the air is coming in and out. Or the rise and fall of our belly. This is a good anchor for our mind because it's something that's happening all the time that we don't really pay attention to unless there's a problem. So that's what makes it a good anchor. We don't have a lot of emotional investment in our breath. It's just something that happens for most of us. So we're going to place our attention on the breath. And every time a thought or a memory or a daydream comes into your mind to distract you, Just place your attention back on your breath, On the next in breath. That breath is always there for us to return to. In, Out. So, I hear a sound, I wonder where it is. Bring my attention back to the breath. I think about what I'm doing later, Bring my attention back to the breath. We don't want to beat ourselves up, But just bring our attention back again and again. Some people find it really helpful to mentally count. So on the in breath, You note one and on the out breath, Two. In one, Out two. And that can just make your breath anchor a little bit stronger, A little bit easier to focus on. In one, Out two. In one, Out two. And we'll just sit here breathing for a little while, Breathing together. I'll mind the time and I'll ring the bell again at the end. Thank you for taking the time to sit with me and have a good day.