Screw, This Dharma Thing

It was the 2013 KPY retreat and Mae Yo gave each of her students an everyday object and told us to go out and contemplate it. I eagerly waited in line to receive my object and when I got to the front and opened my hand, Mae Yo gave me a screw. Honestly I was none too pleased with that screw from the get go. Other folks were getting much cooler objects. The person in front of me got a clock, that’s super Dharmay, contemplating time and all, that I could have worked with, but a screw…what the heck was I going to do with a screw?

I went outside and stared at the thing..my first thoughts, screw this, I totally got screwed. It wasn’t really just my object that was upsetting me, it was the whole exercise, it was the fact that I was feeling super stuck in my practice and had been for months. The screw reminded me who was in charge (hint, not me). As much as I wanted to control my object, now I had a burden, a screw I had to safeguard, keep close, not lose. I had an obligation I didn’t want. Worse than my obligation to the screw though was my obligation to the exercise, to my teacher, to my Dharma practice. The longer I stared at the screw the more I freaked-out…the screw became a symbol for my practice, for enlightenment itself, and I was sitting there thinking, “I hate this screw, I have no idea what I’m going to do with it, but it feels like such a burden.”

First off, I did not want to be forced to give up my identity, which I had worked so hard to create. I didn’t want to lose control over my time, didn’t want to give-up the people and activities I loved. I mean really, can serious dharma practitioners/enlightened people travel, do pilates, go shopping, have relationships with husbands and family and friends?  I also didn’t want the responsibility, to the temple, to any kind of religious leadership role (I had had a lot of responsibilities with my Vajrayana community and overtime, especially as I struggled with meaning in my practice, it had become a hardship for me). As I sat there my brain was running wild with all the loss I imagined would come with the ‘burden’ of enlightenment, this sketch from my notebook pretty much summed it up:

Serious Dharma Practice ≠ (does not equal) Fun, Carefree, Enjoyable Life

Now that I look at this I laugh…because it assumes my current life is all rainbows and unicorns (which if true would make for a very short and boring blog and no reason for a Dharma practice). But back then, my thought was that it was getting dark, I could grab my car keys from my tent, slip out of the retreat tonight and no one would notice till morning. By that time I would have a solid head start (since the Dharma was after me). My follow-up thought however was a bit more rational, clearly I am suffering (i.e. freaking the hell out) perhaps I should use the method that has worked out pretty well so far and try to identify the wrong views…

•  I began by asking myself if all this stuff I am worried about losing  was really all that awesome? Can I really keep it and where is the suffering of having it? I started with identity and looked at its components, my body, my family/friends, my hobbies, my stuff.I felt like I had worked so hard building this life, collecting these things, nurturing these relationships — how could I just walk away and leave it behind. But really, that’s the fallacy of a sunk cost, yes I have put in a ton of work, but does that really mean I should put in more?

And man did I work… For my body to stay strong, to be beautiful, I worked-out 3 X a day. I managed my diet vigilantly.  With every pound I lost I was happy but with every pound I gained I was 10X sadder. Then there was my stuff, my clothes, my furniture, all the things that let me control my image. But to afford it all my husband worked a crazy stressful and hard job. I had to watch someone I love suffer, and endure being in a relationship where I often felt like less of a priority than my husband’s job. Still these things we bought broke and faded and needed replacing. And that relationship, that was so important to me, suffered strain and decay as well. And what about all the activities I enjoyed — this blog is already full of stories about the struggles of my travels, time with friends and family, with my hobbies and my job. I knew I struggled, I knew I couldn’t exert control and keep the people and things I loved..still somehow I felt like practicing was going to ‘take’ from me things I wasn’t ready to lose.

• I already knew I had lost lots of stuff unwillingly,  my next question was had I ever given up anything willingly, rather than having it ‘taken’, and what did that look like. I started by thinking about quitting smoking. Yes, it had been a little hard, but in the end I did it because I was afraid of the risk, tired of the damage it was doing to my body. I had quit yoga for a similar reason, I kept injuring my lower back and I was tired of going back and forth between the yoga studio and my physical therapist. I quit my Vajrayana practice when I got tired of the emotional pain it caused me, my feeling of being lost and angry. I started seeing that there were lots of things I had given up on my own terms, when I was tired of the consequences of them, was it possible enlightenment was  like this too?

At this point I had calmed down just enough to go and ask for help…Frankly I was still feeling stuck in my practice and like a real wreck until Neecha helped me see the next 2 wrong views:

• Just because something is unknown does it necessarily mean it’s bad? Scary?

Part of my fear of continuing to practice, of eventual enlightenment, was that whatever it is, it’s not something I know, it’s some big scary place ‘over there’. My life may be a bit of a mixed-bag, but I prefer the known to the unknown. I prefer what I believe I can control to what seems uncontrollable to me. But can I really control this life? And will all limited control disappear as I move along the path? This brought me to the deepest problem…

• Even though I was (and am) unenlightened, I assumed I knew exactly what that state would look like if I did ever get there. I assumed that it was a proscriptive state, it had various rules and restraint, that were exactly what I (from my unenlightened state) imagined they would be. I thought it was like hitting the security checkpoint at the airport, I would have to leave behind unticketed companions (like my family and friends), water bottles, and other stuff I still loved and wanted but, which broke the TSA/enlightenment  rules.

Finally Neecha said something to me that really resonated, she said, “do you wear glasses? Contacts?” “Yes, I do” I said. Neecha said, “enlightenment is like putting on glasses, it’s not like everything changes, it’s like seeing the world much more clearly than you did before”.  Honestly, I was not fully convinced, I still had my anxiety, my reservations, about my practice and the direction I was going. But, I had cleared it up enough, gotten enough clarity to get unstuck. In my head I told myself, I’ll keep going, I’ll see where this leads, I can always freak out later afterall…

Now that I look back at this story, at the period that preceded it, I suspect that this fear of moving forward was keeping me stuck. In fact, the next big ‘aha moment’, the one that begins the next “phase’ of my path actually happened just a few days after this story. Guess I wasn’t quite so screwed afterall…