Sitting Through Disappointment

Every year when the temple is in recess, I delve into some sort of couch dharma... it might be a book, a CD, a DVD...This time last year, it was Natalie Goldberg's The Great Failure. This year, I'm reading (as usual) and listening to Pema Chodron's Getting Unstuck.

It is timely.

For the past couple of weeks I've been sitting through a disappointment I created. So excited about the prospect of a new relationship, I built up this great fantasy about what was to come... I ventured past the present moment into the world of grand speculation, and alas... the fantasy was far better than the reality. In a nutshell, I got my feelings hurt. So then what... I found myself left in a space of uncomfortable disappointment. Life was certainly easier when I was not concerned with dating or forging some special relationship. The cynic that is me called to mind quotes from Sartre... "Hell is other people." Much easier to just be alone, it can be... As I sat through it, the disappointment waned... Hell was no longer other people... maybe hell is just dating... maybe hell is just expectation... maybe hell is just in my mind when it is lost in space.

Then, when listening to Disc One of Getting Unstuck, something struck me. Pema talks about learning to stay. Early in the talk, she delivers a one-line teaching that is so quick and so simple it would be easy to miss how powerful it really is:

Whatever arises is fresh, the essence of realization.

It is such an interesting word there, fresh... No matter what the experience... sweet, sour, neutral, painful, humbling, empowering... whatever it is... it is raw, fresh, organic, new. Whatever it is, it is now. We have to deal with it. To run from it is to run from enlightenment... to run from realization. Another quote from Pema:

Actually what I also notice about the few people in my life that I consider to be completely awake... they learn to stay. And that's what you feel, you feel this sense of eternal present. They don't go off anywhere like we do... they just stay. And that seems to be what enlightenment is. It's the simplest thing and the most profound thing at the same time.

I really couldn't find myself on the other side of my disappointment until I allowed myself to just sit in it, to feel it, and to watch it pass. It was a lesson in learning to stay. The great Buddhas and Bodhisattvas only know how many more times I will sit through something fresh before I could be considered "completely awake," but it is a beginning.

Comments

[haikupoet]

this is a great teaching. thanks for sharing it. it is something i reallly need to hear right now.

[chalip]

I read this but somehow forgot to say "You're welcome." I'm humbled to know that anything I say here is of help.