Against The Stream

Right Now It's Like This.

Ajahn Sumedho said, “you know after 40 years of doing this stuff it's really quite simple: mindfulness, liberation is understanding that, ‘Right Now It's Like This.’”

Whatever is happening. All of Buddhism is boiled down to the practice of understanding what's happening in the present moment.

It's like what Ram Das’s famous book, ‘Be Here Now.’

There's the whole Dharma in these words.

Be Here Now.

Right Now It's Like This.

There's all you need to know: Right Now It's Like This.

When you really understand this, you understand it's impermanent. Whatever it is, is changing. The rising and it's passing.

Whatever it is, is being perceived as pleasant or unpleasant or neutral.

Whatever it is, you can suffer about it if you don't accept it this moment, totally and completely, as an impermanent process that's unfolding.

If you're attached, you suffer.

It's not enough to just say, “it's like this.” It also calls for what Ajahn Sumedho referred to as, “unentangled participation with reality.”

Unentangled participation with your emotions.

Do you know the difference between being entangled in an emotion?

I don't know if you've had the experience yet of having an emotion, but you're not entangled in it. It’s the difference between, “I'm afraid I'm ******* terrified.”

With mindfulness, with ‘Right Now It's Like’ you have the experience of like, “wow there's a lot of fear present” without being entangled in it. You'll notice, “my hands are tight, getting sweaty. My thoughts are racing”… but there's a real unentangled relationship to a strong emotion. Right now it's like this. Fear is here, or even craving, and rather than, “I have to have,” you just notice, “wow. There's my mind telling me I need this or need that or I'd be happy if” Anytime your mind is telling you you'll be happy when you get... this is craving.

In the first foundation, which is considered a necessary foundational meditation practice if you want to get free from attachment to life, you have to make friends with death. To acknowledge it.

Death is certain. The time of death, when we're going to die, how we're going to die, is uncertain. But death is certain.

Denial is not a good strategy. Avoidance. Distraction. Not a good strategy.

But turning towards.

This is as all of what we're doing in Buddhist practices.

Buddhist practices teach us to look at it directly, to investigate it.

Don't push. Just use the weight of your own body.

My teacher Ajahn Amaro did these four little tiny books on the Brahma-viharas; loving kindness, compassion, appreciation and equanimity.

It starts with this wise advice in a letter from a massage/bodywork teacher after he died.

“Don't push. Just use the weight of your own body. Don't diagnose. Just be aware. Don't try to help, but also don't turn away. Just be with the person. That's all you have to do.”

So Amaro took those four or five suggestions and wrote this book about compassion.

Reflecting for a moment on this part, “don't try to help but don't turn away”.

How often are you trying to help? Trying to fix? Trying to change and thinking that it's compassion? “I'm going to help you endure suffering.” And even that sort of like reactive thing so many of us do, ”Don't cry. Don't feel your feelings. You're making me really uncomfortable being uncomfortable. Do you need a tissue? Do you need a hug? Is there something I can do to make you stop feeling the way you’re feeling?”

And I know sometimes it's empathy, and it's just like, “I want to be here with you and I'm offering you a tissue and it's totally compassionate.” But if we look at our intentions,  sometimes we’re trying to help someone not feel what they're feeling rather than be with it.

So not trying to fix, but also don't turn away.

Amaro says, “compassion in action means working with the painful conditions in ourselves and others and seeing how they mingle.” When you're with someone who's suffering, what's it like for you? How much do you take it on? How uncomfortable is it? 

I know for me it can be uncomfortable. It's hard to tolerate other people’s pain. It makes you want to fix it.

What Needs to Change in Order for Us to Be at Ease?

I was wondering if you can reflect for a moment on the assumption that nothing in your life needs to change? Nothing outside of you needs to change for you to be happy, for you to be totally at ease, free from suffering.

Now I'm sure we could think of some examples of situations that do need to change, but let's just play the game of nothing outside of you needs to change and that everything you need in order to get free is all inside us. It's all internal work, on our attitudes and our outlooks, on our reactivity and our way of showing up, our way of relating to our own minds and relating to the world and relating to each other.

That it's all in us.

That nobody else needs to change for you to be happy.

Nothing.

The world doesn't need to change. It can stay in its ******** state of ignorance and greed and hatred; the world can stay just the way it is, and we can learn to not suffer at it or about it.

That doesn't mean we wouldn't have tremendous compassion for all the ignorance and confusion and forms of oppression and the ability to care deeply; and to not suffer. To have equanimity. To be at ease in the midst of total acceptance with the world, and still working for a positive change.

‘Just One More’'‘ Thoughts on Ajahn Amaro’s book on appreciative joy.

How often does that thought arise in your life? Whether it's about potato chips or thinking, “I'm just gonna …or… I've already kind of contemplated this 3700 times but I'm going to go over it one more time before I get to sleep. Let me just think about this a little bit more.”

The core formula of Buddhism is that it's our relationship to pleasure, craving – it’s Taṇhā 

the Buddhist word thirst – that is the cause of our unhappiness, the cause of our suffering.  The good news is it's not your fault. It's just what it's like to have incarnated as a human being with the nervous system and a survival instinct and there is craving. We all have it. The bad news is, it's here to stay on some level or another.

The second chapter of the book is named, “Desire is a Liar”.

In your history, how often have your desires misled you?

How often are you so convinced, “I want? I need just one more. I have to have.”  

And not just drugs. All of the time in your relationship to pleasure, in your relationship to people, places, whatever it is. How often is it leading you down a dead end?

Ajahn Amaro says, “when the mind says, ‘I must have, or she's got one I need one, or I've got to have a better one than him,” we shouldn't consider that it's telling the truth.

I like that. We shouldn't even consider that our minds are telling us to the truth. 

When our mind says things like, “This! I have to have it. Just one more.” That is the thinking problem. It's not that the mind thinks. That’s not a problem. It’s that we believe what we think.

He says you shouldn't even consider that it is telling the truth. It's an impulse that the mind is coming up with, and that certainly we don't have to go along with it.

Did you know that? Did you know that you don't have to go along with what your mind is telling you to do? I did not know that which I'm pretty sure is why I'm an addict in the first place, because my mind just kept telling me to chase pleasure and I just kept saying, “yes Sir!”

I did not know I had a choice before I started meditating, before I started bringing mindfulness. That I had a choice was a revelation. It was an intervention. Wow.  I don't have to do what my mind is telling me to do.

It's simple logic. It's an impulse that the mind is coming up with and certainly we don't have to go along with it. If we learn to watch that impulse and recognize that it's a lie, we will not get caught in it. Then we won't have to create the feeling of disappointment or lack.  We will find that we are much more content and happier with the way things are.

30-minute guided meditation at Against The Stream Meditation Center, Venice, CA.

All of the Buddha's teachings came out of conversations he was having with people.

Certainly, I don't have all the answers. But I've got lots of opinions and a pretty particular understanding of what the Buddha taught and how we can apply it.

30-minute guided meditation and dharma talk at Against The Stream Meditation Center, Venice, CA.

We Gotta Have Faith!

30-minute guided meditation and dharma talk at Against The Stream.

Effort & Wise Interventions

Two levels of effort:

One is that big lifetime daily effort. How much are we sitting? Ethics? Precepts? Are we going to go on retreats? Are we making that a regular part of our schedule? A priority of our life?

Then, there's the moment-to-moment effort to overcome the suffering that your mind is creating against your will - the untrained monkey mind - which is gonna get in some fights in your mind, gonna get in some fantasies in your mind, and it's gonna watch some *********** and it’s gonna have some resentments. You know, the untrained mind that's just gonna do whatever it feels like without your volitional involvement, without your consent, your mind is just gonna create suffering for you.

Now that's the good news and the bad news.

Good news is that it's not actually your fault. The fact that you suffer isn't your fault. It's just what it's like to be a human being. All of us have minds that are fueled by craving and aversion and self-centeredness.

But without training - without effort - it's hopeless. There's not even a possibility of true happiness.

So the bad news is that you’re 100% responsible to do something about if you want to stop suffering. You've got to do all of the work yourself. There's no grace of a guru. There's no divine intervention. There's no magic pill to pop you out of the matrix. The ayahuasca doesn't work. The LSD doesn't work. None of that **** works. It's all dead ends Only training your mind through your own effort will lead to a reliable transformation.

So the Buddha says if you're down, if you really want to do this, you’ve gotta do all of the work yourself.

It's one of the things I love about the original teachings of the Buddha. He would say, “here's the four efforts to train your mind … and here's the way to do it”.

But you've got to do all of the work yourself.