Not This Not That

I feel like at this moment in a relatively long life so far, I should be able to say yes to certain things, no to others, and be able to count on things remaining relatively stable. Do you have that feeling?

And yet I can’t because they’re not: nothing is either this certain thing or that. Nothing is truly solid, reliable, permanent. And the more energy I put into thinking it should be, the more struggle I’m in.

When I can remember that my work, my home, my family, my life, are not definable or corral-able or really anything I can count on, it’s incredibly scary, yes. But it’s also a little bit funny, a little bit odd, and in the end, such a relief.

Transcript

Hey everyone,

It's Judy Cohen,

And this is Wake Up Call 444.

And here we are at the very last chapter of Pema Chodron's book,

The Places That Scare You.

The chapter is called The In-Between State,

And the way she describes that state is as a scary place,

Maybe the scariest,

And maybe that's why the title of the book,

I don't know.

Pema says it's important to hear about this in-between state,

Otherwise we think the warrior's journey is one way or the other,

Either we're all caught up or we're free.

The fact is we spend a lot of time in the middle.

So what does she mean by one way or the other,

And what is this middle where we spend a lot of time?

In this past week,

There's been a lot on my mind.

I've had worry and fear and uncertainty.

I've had aversion.

I've had all three poisons,

Really,

Aversion or hatred and also greed and all,

Or grasping and also delusion.

And so it's just one of those weeks,

One of those moments,

And you know,

This is also just how life is.

Those eight worldly winds,

Pleasure and pain,

Gain and loss,

Praise and blame,

Fame and disrepute,

You know,

They blow through our lives all day,

Every day.

And I think,

You know,

When we're paying attention,

We can see them.

It's almost like,

You know,

We can lick a finger and hold it up and feel which way the wind is blowing in any moment.

And I know when I remember to do that,

Or from a mindfulness metaphor,

More granularly remember to use the portable mindfulness practice of stop,

You know,

Stop,

Take a breath,

Observe.

In this case,

Which wind is blowing,

Right?

And then proceed.

It's pretty easy to see which wind it is in any given moment,

Or really it's which winds,

Plural.

For me,

It's often more than one.

So this week,

Each time I put up my finger or stopped,

There was fear,

There was sorrow,

There was shame.

And a lot of this goes into that aversion bucket,

Some of it in the greed bucket,

The grasping bucket.

And there were these winds of pain,

Loss,

Blame,

Disrepute,

Right?

So that column of the eight worldly winds.

And my finger would also catch plenty of love and ease and mindfulness,

Moments when none of the three poisons was present.

And those were the winds of pleasure and gain and praise and fame.

So these eight worldly winds,

They're just how life is and just how it feels to be human.

So then the mindfulness question becomes,

Do we see them?

Do we stop?

S-T-O-P,

Stop,

Take a breath,

Observe,

Proceed.

Do we put a finger up into the wind?

And do we see our reactions to them?

Are we paying attention moment to moment with courage,

With grace?

And can we stay with what we see?

And for me,

This goes to what Pema says when she observes that we tend to think everything is one way or the other.

We're either all caught up or we're free,

Meaning we take our practice to be something it isn't.

We mistakenly believe that we're either not present,

In which case we're operating at the mercy of our conditioning,

And as she says,

We're caught,

Or we've let go completely and we're blissfully surfing the waves of life and we're completely free.

And so what she's saying,

What I take her to mean is,

No,

That's not right.

We spend a long time in the middle.

And what I understand her to be saying by that is once we're really dedicated to our practice,

Dedicated to mindfulness as a way of life,

Then as we make our way down that path,

The path of mindfulness,

We can begin to see how,

In fact,

We spend most of our time in that middle ground of being mindful and also being deeply uncomfortable with what we discover when we're being mindful.

Another way of saying that is we spend most of our time in not knowing.

And so for me,

Not knowing has a few dimensions on a very practical level.

Not knowing can be as simple,

But not always easy,

As realizing I'm not sure about who said what or who's right.

And maybe this is problematic in the context of practicing law,

But in another way of thinking,

It can also be a very good way of stepping into a case.

I know that for me,

My most embarrassing moments as a lawyer were almost always caused by me thinking I knew something and discovering I didn't,

Whether it was a point of fact,

Point of loss,

Strategic point,

Prediction,

Really anything.

So this level of not knowing and being in that uncomfortable place of not knowing can be very useful,

Also super useful at home.

The minute I'm sure I'm right,

I'm in trouble.

When my husband and I were married,

A friend told us,

You can be right or you can be married.

And I try to remember that when I think I'm right at home with varying degrees of success.

On the next level,

I don't know what's going to happen this summer.

I want to know,

I want to concretize.

There's nothing more I want to do,

But it's impossible.

I can't know.

Not only can I not know that everyone will be all right,

But it's the opposite.

I know that no one will always be all right because all of us are being buffeted by those eight wins all the time.

And on the next level,

I don't know how long I'll live in my pretty house and my sweet life or how long anyone I know and love will be around either.

And on the deepest level of all,

I don't know what will happen to the world politically,

In terms of the planet,

What will happen to our species and the other species.

And so most of the time I put all of that not knowing away because it's so big and so scary.

But Pema says,

Anxiety,

Heartbreak,

And tenderness mark this in-between state.

It's the kind of place we usually want to avoid.

The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint.

By not knowing,

Not hoping to know,

And not acting like we know what's happening,

We begin to access our inner strength.

So it's that shifting ground,

That anxiety and heartbreak of not knowing what will happen and yet also knowing that not knowing is the only reality.

As the Zen folks say,

Not knowing is most intimate.

And so I'm trying to stay there in that middle with the anxiety and the heartbreak on that shifting ground of not knowing and not hoping to know.

And the funny thing is,

It's also,

In my experience,

An incredibly joyful place to be.

I mean,

When I can really be there,

It's not just anxiety and heartbreak because it turns out to be true that life is neither this nor that.

It's everything.

It's also joyful and peaceful.

And I think,

And you'll have to verify this for yourself,

But I think that if we pay attention and stay in the middle,

We realize that's how it is for everyone.

Suffer and pain,

Gain and loss,

Praise and blame,

Fame and disrepute.

If we hold up our fingers,

All of the winds are always blowing.

And then it's also possible to see right here and now how this being human is not easy and that that's true for everyone.

And seeing that just breaks open the heart,

Or at least it breaks open mind.

Just like Pema says,

Staying with not knowing is what heals.

It allows us to let go of our self-importance.

It's how the warrior learns to love.

And that's what we're really trying to learn,

Isn't it?

So let's sit.

Finding your posture,

The most comfortable and also dignified posture for you for right in this moment,

This sit,

This day on the cusp of the end of May and the beginning of June,

True summer here in the Northern Hemisphere,

Bringing the attention to the body.

How's your body feeling this morning,

This afternoon,

This evening,

Wherever you are?

Sensing into the weight of the body,

Sitting or standing or lying down or walking or driving,

The way that gravity is holding us,

Attaching us to this earth,

Our home.

Right now,

We're awake,

Alive to the sensations of the body,

The sounds in our environment,

Our breath flowing in and out.

And one day,

We'll just dissolve back into the earth.

For all of us,

That is the truth.

That is just the way things are.

For all of us,

For everyone we love,

For all of the things that we surround ourselves with,

All of the beauty,

All of the difficulty,

Everything just arising and passing away.

The sweetness of a joyful moment that happened yesterday or last week or last month,

Just a memory so fleeting,

And the difficult moments,

Too.

Something we might remember,

But it's already passed.

And here we are just sitting in this moment right now,

The sweetness of it or the difficulty of it,

Right here in the middle.

I love this poem by Juan Jimenez,

Oceans.

My boat struck something deep.

Nothing happened.

Sounds,

Silence,

Waves.

Nothing happened or perhaps everything happened.

And I'm sitting in the middle of my new life.

Thanks,

Everyone,

For being on the wake-up call today.

It's really wonderful to see you all.

Have a good Thursday and a safe Thursday and a safe weekend,

And I'll see you next Thursday.

Take care.