When Uncertainty Seems Unbearable

In this talk I explore the ways we can be with the fear and vulnerability that is part of living in uncertain times and an uncertain world. With so much anxiety about war and climate change and our sense of division from each other, there are ways to practice with all of it without turning away or sinking into despair.

Transcript

Here we are,

All of us in a season that is so fraught,

A time that I can't remember in my lifetime,

Where anxiety is everywhere.

I experience it myself.

My patients come into my office talking about their anxiety.

It's all over the media.

Another source of anxiety,

But not the primary source of anxiety,

That I have rarely seen so many people,

Friends,

Colleagues,

Talk about fear.

And what I notice in myself is that I turn toward the news,

I turn toward this burning world,

And then I find myself overwhelmed and I have to turn away.

And then I can't keep turning away.

I need to turn back because hearing the cries of the world is something we simply do.

But what does our practice have to offer us in a time like this?

I mean,

The stereotype of the Zen practitioner is that they just sit on a cushion and meditate peacefully,

Oblivious to what's happening in the world.

And of course,

All of you know that that is not our practice.

But what does practice have to offer?

Well,

What went through my mind was a koan that I studied years ago now from Master Zhao Zhou.

Some of you remember him from the famous koan Mu that we start with in our koan curriculum.

Zhao Zhou lived in the 8th century in China.

And there's a famous encounter where a monk asks Master Zhao Zhou,

When times of great difficulty visit us,

How should we greet them?

And Zhao Zhou answers simply,

Welcome.

And I thought when I first studied it,

That this was profound.

And when I looked at it this weekend,

I thought Zhao Zhou was not living in the times we're living in.

Or he couldn't have said this.

So I looked it up.

I looked up the history of when Zhao Zhou and the student had this encounter in the 8th century in China.

Well,

It turns out it was a time of great difficulty.

There was something called the An Lushan Rebellion that China in the 8th century was flourishing.

The arts,

The science,

The philosophy.

It was a golden age.

And then there was a rebellion that ushered in a decade of civil war and famine and disease.

And two out of three people in China died during that decade.

This was a time of horror.

This was a time of utter collapse.

And it was at this time that the monk asked,

When times of great difficulty visit us,

How should we greet them?

And Zhao Zhou said,

Welcome.

What could that mean?

Well,

Of course,

It means that in a certain sense,

There's nothing to do but welcome.

That this is the unfolding of events.

It was what transpired in China.

But it was also about understanding at the deepest level that all things change.

All things are impermanent.

And that we must be with it all.

What's been coming back to me is a story that I think will be familiar to many of you.

The story of the farmer.

It's a Taoist story,

But I'll read it to you again.

A farmer and his son had a beloved horse that helped the family make a living.

One day,

The horse ran away and his neighbors came to commiserate,

Saying,

Your horse ran away.

What terrible luck.

The farmer replied,

Maybe,

Maybe not.

We'll see.

A few days later,

The horse A few days later,

The horse came home,

Bringing a few wild mares to the farm as well.

The neighbors celebrated.

Your horse is back and he's brought several horses home.

What great luck.

And the farmer replied,

Maybe,

Maybe not.

We'll see.

Later,

The farmer's son was trying to tame one of the mares,

And she knocked him to the ground,

Breaking his leg.

And of course,

The villagers commiserated.

How unlucky.

And the farmer,

Of course,

Replied,

Maybe,

Maybe not.

We'll see.

A few weeks later,

Soldiers from the emperor's army marched through the village,

Recruiting all the able-bodied young men for the army.

They didn't take the peasant's son,

Who was still recovering from his broken leg.

The neighbors rejoiced.

What tremendous luck.

And of course,

The farmer replied,

Maybe,

Maybe not.

We'll see.

Perhaps you've had the experience in your life,

Certainly that I've had,

Where you are sure about what's to come.

You are sure about something being good or bad.

And many of us are sure now,

Many of us are sure that if things don't go our way in the next election,

Everything will fall apart.

And you don't have to be on any particular side of the political divide to believe this.

Everybody believes,

Many people believe this.

My experience of certainty that has stayed with me was that I was fired from my first job as a psychiatrist.

I was,

I had been in training at a very prestigious hospital and I was a junior staff member.

And the head of the hospital said to me,

You know,

There really isn't going to be a future for you here because what I was doing was not of interest to the hospital.

And I was sure that this was the end of my career.

I was sure that I shouldn't have become a psychiatrist.

I had no future as a psychiatrist.

And it took a long time for me to pick my head up and think about applying for another position somewhere else.

So I did.

I got another job at an institution where I met my first research mentor,

Who showed me how exciting it could be to do the work that I've ended up doing for the last 25 years.

Had I not been fired,

That connection probably would not have happened.

And the course of my life would have been very different.

Now,

I don't tell this story to say,

No problem,

Everything's going to be fine,

Don't worry.

No,

I'm not saying that at all.

What I'm saying is that we fall into what our ancestors often called delusive certainty,

Where we are so sure about what's to come.

And that what this practice asks us to do is let go of that certainty and simply ride the waves of change that are inevitable.

Tonight,

I read a teaching from Joan Sutherland,

And I'm going to read the Fuller teaching.

As she was trying to understand these difficult times we're in,

She said,

In our world,

Things are always getting broken and mended and broken again.

And there is also something that never breaks.

Everything rises and falls,

And yet in exactly the same moment,

Things are eternal and go nowhere at all.

How do we see with a kind of binocular vision,

One eye aware of how things are coming and going all the time,

The other aware of how they've never moved at all?

Her teaching is that we can use that binocular vision to essentially practice with not knowing and with compassion.

Now,

Of course,

One of the critiques of any meditative practice is that we'll sit on our cushion and do nothing.

That is not our practice.

And for that reason,

I chose the reading from Bernie Glassman tonight,

Bearing Witness.

As some of you know,

Bernie Glassman was one of the great activists of Zen in America.

And as he said,

The training and the practice is to witness,

Not to deny,

But to broaden our vision.

When we bear witness,

When we become the situation,

Homelessness,

Poverty,

Illness,

Violence,

The climate crisis,

The right action arises by itself.

We don't have to worry about what to do.

We don't have to figure out solutions ahead of time.

And so our practice is to do this dance of continuing to sit with and bear witness to the suffering in the world,

Including,

Of course,

Our own suffering,

Our own anxiety,

Our own tendency to fall into despair.

And to let that broadening vision inspire us to action,

Inspire us to get up off the cushion and do what we can.

Think about how surprised we've all been by events in the last six months.

Many horrible events,

Some events that seemed horrible,

That turned out differently than we expected.

That's going to continue for as long as we are alive.

And the job is to sit with it and to see where we are called to compassionate action.

We don't have to figure it out in advance.

We don't have to know what's going to happen or even what we're going to do as things play out.

We simply stay awake and aware.

And of course,

The call is to bear witness and not to give up,

Not to simply sit still,

But to do what we can.

During this time of the An Lushan Rebellion,

When there was so much death and destruction,

There was a poet who was trapped in a town that was being destroyed.

And he wrote a poem called,

The View This Spring.

The poem is just two lines.

It goes,

Goes,

The nation is destroyed,

Mountains and rivers remain.

The nation is destroyed,

Mountains and rivers remain.

And when we broaden our awareness,

As Bernie Glassman reminds us,

We see the mountains and the rivers.

We see beyond the day-to-day suffering and some of it horrible suffering.

And we see all that remains,

All that is not wrong in all the work that we can do in this life to ease suffering.

And so we turn toward,

We turn away as we need to,

We turn back to hear the cries of the world and determine right action moment after moment.

No need to know,

No need to be certain about anything.

All we need to do is remain awake.

Thank you.