OK a little warning: This post is a little more technical/boringly written in an effort to more clearly show the structure of my thinking. However, it does deal well with the key cause (wrong view) of fears and phobias –the crazy belief that what has happened to in the past/what we imagine is an indicator of what will happen in the future. Spoiler alert: it’s not, too much changes, all the time… So anyway, if you can stay awake, it may just be worth the read ;).

I Rather be Doing ANYTHING Other Than Having a Root Canal:

Step 1, Story/Situation:  I have spent most of my life in absolute dread of the dentist. I mean horror movie-like scenes  played in my head at the mere mention of the word. When I was a kid, I had a sadistic dentist and when he was angry, annoyed, or just having a good time, he would drill my lips and gums ‘accidentally’ when filling cavities. Needless to say, once I was an adult, I avoided the dentist like the plague.  This strategy worked great, till it didn’t, and I started having pretty intense pain in a back molar.

One night, I go to the Temple in a panic, I clearly needed to go to the dentist, but I was so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so afraid. Help!! Mae Yo and Phra Anan came to the rescue and started talking me through the crazy and fixed ideas (i.e. permanent so by definition wrong views) I had in my head that were clearly creating suffering (the unique type of suffering that arises from not having paid a visit to a dentist in 15 years…). Here is what I began to see:

Step 2. Wrong Views: My wrong view of the situation

a) That the dentist is always scary/painful

b) That my past bad experiences with the dentist will be mirrors for my future experiences — to convince myself that this was wrong, I did a little exercise; I considered all the ways I could think of that this experience would actually be different from when I was a kid. For example, now I’m an adult, before I was a child. This is a different dentist, in a different city, the old dentist is dead already (though zombie dentist would be in keeping with the horror movie dentist I had been imagining for 15 years). Dental technology has changed. My pain tolerance and perception has changed. In essence a ton of stuff had changed. This exercise, which Mae Yo walked me through, began loosening the gripping belief that underlaid my phobia –I had one bad experience and now they will all be the same. Even though, factors and conditions had already changed.

c) That I can predict  what will be painful/the source of my suffering

Step 3 Concepts: The deeper concepts or beliefs that underlie this particular (and many other) stories

a) That a particular stimulus will yield predictable results. In truth, there is uncertainty. No stimulus (like a dentist visit) is ever exactly the same as a previous one (circumstances constantly change) so there is no guarantee that results will be the same. Plus, I am not all knowing, so I don’t have the power to fully understand all the causes, how could I predict results with 100% certainty?

b) That a past experience is a credible indicator for what will happen in the future. That I know what to expect. In reality I have experiences all the time that I then try to replicate and am unable to do so. This idea is actually one I consider all the time with food. If I go to a restaurant and have the best pizza, best ice cream, can I go back and get it again? If I do go back, and the dish is still there, I notice sometimes the flavors change, the cooking changes, its better or worse than before.

c) That something being a certain way means it will always be that way. All things in fact cease. As such  they can never always be the same

Floater Step, More Stories, More Evidence:  More Story: This set of contemplations, plus the throbbing pain in my tooth, were enough to get me into the dentist’s office. As it turned-out, I needed 4 crowns and elected to have all the work done under a mild sedative. The procedure, from my doped-out perspective, was over in a minute and involved absolutely no pain. So me and the dentist lived happily ever after…

But actually, there was more to it. The next day I went to eat solid food and each chew was agony…I went back to the dentist and the crown didn’t quite fit. It took several more visits before it finally did and the chewing pain ceased.  In addition to several more trips to the dentist, my post procedure experience exposed a new wrong view and gave me more evidence to consider. I originally worried only about pain during the procedure, I had no concern at all about  pain afterwards. Once I had pain afterwards, I suffered a new wrong view,  that once I had pain I would have pain and suffer with it for a long time (actually, you may notice it is just a different version of the previous concept that my past bad experiences predict the future). That it would be hard to fix. In reality, a few trips to adjust the crown brought my pain to an end.

When I really thought it through, I saw that my beliefs about pain, fear, the stuff I worry about, they were not entirely accurate. After all had they been I would have hurt in the dentist’s chair and been fine after. Once I wasn’t fine, I would be in pain forever. Fortunately, I managed to escape eternal pain, this time around. Step 4, Suffering: But, all the suffering I managed to create around one little trip to the dentist, was pretty epic in scale. There was the physical pain of my tooth ache, the worry about going to the dentist, the worry afterwards that the pain from the crown would never get fixed. There was my sour attitude toward my family, toward the dentist and his staff — I was so busy being immersed in my fear I had no concern for anyone else. There was also the very clear consequences of my wrong view that prevented me from going to the dentist in the first place — years of refusing to go for even a cleaning probably contributed to the state of decay my teeth were in.

Step 5, Dharma: Later blogs will have much more detail about  the aggregates, which is a major ‘dharma idea’ about what makes-up our ‘self’. If this does not compute now, fear not, it will later. But Rupa, or form, was the first topic given to me for contemplation, the only thing I considered deeply, though weakly, in this early period of practice. It is the outside world trappings (i.e. not stuff in my head) that provides the foundations for all the drama imaginings that ensued. In this story, we have my body, my teeth, the dentist, the dentist office with its machines and funky chair, etc. My memory and association of each of these material things triggered an imagination, built on memories, that prompted my fear.