Falling Down, Standing Up
Leslie Jamison has a collection of essays with the title, Make It Scream, Make It Burn. I finished reading the collection last week. It’s the second book of Jamison’s that I’ve read; the first book was The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath. You can guess where the latter fits into my life. Actually, I’ll take a moment to express my gratitude for The Recovering. Without it, I may very well not be where I am today—but that’s a story for another time. For now, thank you Leslie.
There is an essay in Make It Scream, Make It Burn inspired by and partly about “The Museum of Broken Relationships.” It’s a real museum, I learned, in Zagreb, Croatia. The museum features relics from relationships that had fractured, or at least met with significant enough injuries that something important could find a new home—on public display with an accompanying curatorial note. We hear of a steel-guitar slide, a shopping list, and the sheet music from Rachmaninoff’s Concerto no. 3 for Piano, among other things. We also hear from one of the museum’s creators, who says that she
always imagined her museum as a “civic temple where melancholy has the right to exist,” where sadness can be understood as something other than a feeling meant to be replaced. She doesn’t like when people praise her museum’s “therapeutic value.” It insists that sadness needs curing.
I stopped reading after these lines.
Sometimes meditation, Buddhism, and Zen are sought out, praised, or invited into certain spaces because of their (perceived or actual) therapeutic value, not unlike The Museum of Broken Relationships. The similarity is part of what caught my attention. More, though, was the discomfort with the museum’s value as, in whole or in part, therapeutic. “Melancholy has the right to exist,” she says. Sadness doesn’t need curing, she implies.
I feel a need to revisit the place of suffering in our practice-lives—and so I am. It’s not as clear-cut as we might imagine.
The Four Noble Truths are among Shakyamuni Buddha’s first teachings following his awakening under the Bo Tree. The truths are:
There is suffering.
There are causes of suffering.
There is cessation of suffering.
There is a path that leads to the cessation of suffering.
If you look around even a little bit, you’ll notice that expressions, formulations, and presentations of these four truths vary. Sometimes I see expressions of the first truth that read, “All of life is suffering” or “Everything is suffering.” These are bold, almost shocking on their surface; they’re noticeably different from the more palatable, “There is suffering.”
I mention the Four Noble Truths, however, not to list and comment on their various formulations. Rather, if we approach them from a certain perspective, we find a progression that says something about the place of suffering in our practice-lives. Namely, there is suffering and we can discern its causes. (At least, some of the time we can do that and to some extent.) We need not suffer, though—there is cessation of suffering—and we can bring about suffering’s cessation by both discerning its causes and walking a path that leads to this.
An implication is that suffering is present, though it need not be; unnecessary suffering can be avoided and unavoidable suffering can perhaps be managed. It’s a small step from this perspective to what is sometimes called “Buddhism / Zen as therapy.” There are other possible perspectives on suffering, though.
Last year, we spent about two months exploring the Metta Sutta (Loving Kindness Sutra) at O-An Zendo. I offered a series of Dharma talks as part of that collective exploration. At the time I stressed that the teachings do not ask us, do not require us, to do away with or get rid of anything. We are invited, encouraged even, to embrace all aspects of our lives and include them in our practice. For me, this certainly means my anxieties and fears, frustrations and irritations—in a word, my suffering. From this perspective, suffering isn’t necessarily something to be avoided or managed; these terms don’t fit into the framework. I’ll go farther and say that it’s not about avoiding or managing—but what is it about, then?
One response is: inquiry and investigation. A willingness to meet what arises directly, unfiltered and ask, “What is this?” Sometimes—a lot of the time for me—it shows up as, “What am I doing here?!”
There is a passage from Dogen Zenji’s fascicle Inmo (Thusness) in the Shobogenzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye) that comes to mind. Dogen Zenji writes:
Since ancient times, these words have been spoken in both India and the deva world: “One who falls to the ground uses the ground to stand up. One who ignores the ground and tries to stand cannot.” The meaning is that those who fall down on the earth stand up on the earth; it is impossible to get up without using the earth.
Some people interpret this as great enlightenment, which is the desirable way to become free from body and mind. Thus, when being asked how buddhas attain the way, they say that it is like those who fall to the ground and use the ground to stand up.
Thoroughly investigate this and penetrate the views from the past, the future, and this very moment. Great enlightenment, beyond enlightenment, further delusion, and loss of delusion are immersed in enlightenment, immersed in delusion. They all fall to the ground and get up using the ground.
This is a wonderful passage. The greatly enlightened, those gone far beyond enlightenment, those in delusion, and those utterly lost in delusion—all of them are in fact immersed in enlightenment and immersed in delusion. That is, everyone falls to the ground and gets up using the ground.
Humility—being “humble and not conceited,” as we read in the Metta Sutta—has been an important part of my practice for the last two years. What does it mean to be “humble”? How does someone who is “not conceited” move through the world?
I’ve learned that I can practice humility in a more-inclusive way than I had thought. I used to believe that I needed to uproot any trace or tendency towards arrogance and conceit; I thought that there would come a day when I would never fall down. I would, instead, always walk straight and sure-footed—stable and upright even! I used to think that someone practices humility and being not conceited only by being humble and not conceited.
Despite my best efforts, however, I cannot walk straight and sure-footed all the time. Sometimes I fall to the ground; I behave in a not-humble way. Occasionally it shows up as excessive self-deprecation, a way that reveals of how little importance I consider myself. When I become aware of how it is that I am are behaving, though, that I have fallen to the ground, I am then presented with a choice: either I can reject that of which I have become aware or I can accept it and, then, set an intention to investigate it. What it this? What is (or: has been) going on here? If the former, I am left laying on the ground. If the latter, I use the ground to stand up. That is, I use that moment of falling down as an opportunity for inquiry and investigation. What is happening right here, right now? And if I choose, I can use the ground to stand up; I can step into the opportunity to become “right-sized” again. Here that means not thinking too little of myself. I can, it seems to me, practice humility and being not-conceited by being not-humble and conceited.
But wait—there’s more. Dogen Zenji continues:
Here is one vital path for getting up: “One who falls to the ground uses the sky to stand up. One who falls to the sky uses the ground to stand up.” Without being thus, you can never get up. This has always been the way with all buddhas and ancestors.
Sometimes when I fall to the ground by behaving in an excessively self-deprecating way, I can practice being humble and not conceited by simply not thinking too little of myself. Other times, though, if this pattern of behavior is particularly strong—if there is a strong current of habit energies flowing in a certain direction—it is appropriate to practice being humble and not conceited by exaggerating some my sense of self-importance. Call this “using the sky to stand up.” Aware of my strong tendency to behave in a self-deprecating way, I can swing with some effort in the opposite direction and, over time, return to being “right-sized.” Here too, it seems to me, I can practice humility and being not-conceited by being not-humble and conceited.
The same is the case in the other direction too. Sometimes I behave in a not-humble and conceited way by revealing an exaggerated sense of self-importance. Here I fall, not to the ground, but to the sky. What can I do when this happens? The same thing as when I fall to the ground. When I become aware of how it is that I am behaving, that I have fallen to the sky, I am then presented with a choice: either I can reject that of which I have become aware or I can accept it and, then, set an intention to investigate it. What am I doing here?! If the former, I am left flailing in the sky. If the latter, I can use the sky or the ground to stand up. That is, I can use that moment of falling down as an opportunity for inquiry and investigation. What is happening right here, right now? If I choose, I can step into the opportunity to become “right-sized” again.
These days I understand that there is a way of being in the world that is inclusive—and I am grateful for that. I can practice humility and being not conceited by being humble and not conceited and practice humility and being not-conceited by being not-humble and conceited, for example. I don’t need to avoid the suffering that arises or devise ways to manage it. Instead, I can meet it with confidence, confidence of which I am reminded whenever I take refuge in the Three Treasures. Ceaseless confidence that I reconnect with every time I step into not-knowing, whenever I embrace confusion instead of running from it. It is all part of one, continuous way of being in the world.