Day 9. Who's This In The Shower With Me?

UPADANA - DO I DO THAT? Upadana is a Tibetan term for overthinking and Suryacitta reads a story about this then explores the theme to illustrate how to free yourself. There is a story, an explanation, a three step method of freeing yourself and a meditation on unhooking from thoughts

Transcript

So hello and welcome to another story. This one's called Upadana. Do I do that? Upadana is not a word we are familiar with but we do it every day. It is a Sanskrit word which loosely translated means something like getting hooked, Clinging to, Attached to. Upadana then is the cause of our suffering. Upadana is that state of clinging when we are locked into a negative state of mind or when we are locked into chasing after something that is pleasurable. Let us suppose we are walking in the park enjoying the trees and sunshine. Then a thought appears or we see something that reminds us of an event. You see a tree similar to the one you used to have near your home with your ex-partner. What happened between us two you begin to ponder. We were so in love and then all went pear-shaped very quickly. You begin to remember all the lovely things you did and perhaps some of the difficult things you went through. Then you start pondering, Feeling lonely. Will I ever meet anybody ever again you wonder. Before you know it you are feeling depressed or at least sad. What happened? Upadana is what happened. You got hooked into your thinking and off you went. All those thoughts fuelled and increased the feeling of loneliness and you got lost in the story. You were in your drama and it is our own drama that we cling to. We cling to it because it makes us feel we are the centre of the universe. It gives us a sense of who we are and our place in the world. It doesn't matter to us if it is a place better than most or lower than most. We are desperate to have a place and to know it. What do we need to do? We need to be willing to come out of the drama, Out of the story in our heads. We need to leave our thought-made world and come back home to the body, To presence. Remember the body is our home so that is where we need to be. We need to become aware of and to experience the sense of loneliness without the story. If we can do this for just a few minutes we will find that the feeling of loneliness begins to be very bearable indeed and at some point it is not there any longer. Three steps to working with Upadana. 1. Stop and acknowledge that you are hooked and clinging. 2. Come out of the storyline. Staying in the story fuels the negative emotion like pouring fuel on the fire. 3. Let go, Move on and have a good day. I want to repeat those three steps again. 1. Stop and acknowledge that you are hooked and clinging. Come out of the storyline. Staying in the story fuels the negative emotion just like pouring fuel on the fire. 3. Let go, Move on and have a good day. So that's the end of the story in the book. So how often do we find ourselves doing this? Again and again getting hooked into the story. I call it a virtual reality where we're lost in mind, Where we're lost in thought and I'm only talking about self-centered thinking here. I'm not talking about practical thinking or creative thinking. That's different. I'm talking about that kind of fixation that we have with thought. It's a kind of primary addiction that we have as human beings. Mind presenting this world to us. There might be a grain of usefulness or truth in the thought but how many times do we have to repeat it to ourselves? And if we can just spend more time at home, More time in presence, What we find is that we know how to act. We know how to be in the world. We don't need to keep thinking everything through. We don't live in stories. We live in real life, In the senses, Here, Alive. It's where an infant lives or an animal without all his conceptualizing but of course with the intelligence and the capabilities of an adult human being. It's not difficult to stop and acknowledge that you're hooked. And when you do, Oh just don't hook, Just come back to what's real. Come out of that story. And then release and relax back into presence or the body, Whatever you want to call it. It doesn't matter. You access presence via the body, So to speak, Via the senses. So remember Upadana, That tendency to keep getting hooked. It's like when there's a fish on the end of a fishing hook. It can't get away and it squirms and wriggles trying to free itself, But it can't. And the hook just goes deeper and deeper and deeper. We get hooked. We get hooked on the thoughts, On the story, But we can't unhook ourselves. The longer we stay in that story, The longer we stay hooked, Just like the fish, The more we wriggle and complain and the deeper the hook goes and the more panic there is. You can see a fish when it's on a hook, It's wanting to get free, It's panicking. We are similar. We go into panic when we, Or we can easily go into panic when we're hooked into thought. So let's have a quiet meditation on this theme. So just sit in quietly. Eyes open or closed. There will be periods of quiet here for you too. Just to sense into what I'm pointing to, To this presence and to be able to observe when you get hooked. You start to feel the breath. Now just here with the breath. Simple, Just sensing into the breath, Sensing into the body. And I want you to notice when you're hooked, You will get hooked on the thought. Ah, There it is. You can just search yourself, Thinking. Then that unhooks you, Release and relax back into presence. Feel the breath. As you tune into these periods of silence, The mentality, The intention. This is a great opportunity for you to see how psychological suffering happens. The moment we get lost in thought, There's that possibility. Are you in presence or are you hooked? It's either one or the other. It's okay if you get hooked, It's okay to lose your way. Thinking, Just repeat that, That's thinking. No judgment, No comment, Just thinking. And we turn back to what's really happening. Don't go into drama about it, No judgment. Tune into the end of the out-breath. There's a beautiful letting go there, Ah. Then there's a pause, Can you feel that? Then the in-breath begins. Again, Notice when you're hooked, You'll notice the body contracts. There's a sort of pinch. Thinking, Release, Come back home to the body, To presence. Okay, I'm bringing this session to a close. I'm just going to say a few words. You can open your eyes and sit as you wish. So in this short meditation, I just wanted to illustrate how we get hooked. We're here, We're alive, We're aware. Then suddenly, Out of nowhere, We find ourselves in this other world, This virtual reality where anything can happen. There are no rules there. And that's the cause of psychological suffering, Or can be, If it's self-centred suffering. All centred around this little image we have in the head of me, Of I, And my life. How it's been, Where it's heading. And always do it with simplicity and gentleness, Just unhook. No drama, No criticism, Just unhook. Beautifully, Elegantly, Unhook, Come back here. That's all you need to do. And feel into the body, Feel into your home, Into presence. Thank you, See you tomorrow.

Reviews

this is exactly where I am and have been for a few years. There’s this one thing that keeps hooking me and it’s making me miserable. I truly want to let it go, but I have found it challenging. I plan to listen to this every day for as long as it takes.. and I say that with a lot of self compassion 🤍💙🦋💙🤍💙🦋💙🤍

Thank you! As always, helpful to unhook and not be the struggling fish on the line of my own thoughts. 🌺🦋

Lovely, eloquent, and helpful. Here or not here.
I can work with that!!!
🙏🏼❤️

These teachings have brought such a profound change to my daily life- thank you - and the realizations continue each time I hear the lessons it’s like I’m hearing them for the first time - quite paradoxical really - the simplicity of what you present in the short lessons but the magnitude of it…