Going Beyond Thought to Awareness

 

            About twenty years ago a dog named Tasha who had been a member of our household/family for thirteen years had begun a downhill trajectory with her health.  A nerve in her spinal column had been damaged earlier in her life and she was losing more and more use of her rear legs with each passing day.  It was heartbreaking to see her dragging both of her rear legs behind her and scraping her skin until it bled, still wanting to help me chase deer away from our vegetable garden.  But she never complained. 

            We discussed whether we should have a vet friend come out and euthanize her while we sat next to her and stroked her.  We talked and thought about this a lot.  We didn’t want her to suffer but who were we to decide to end her life.  There were many reasons and justifications on both sides of this issue and each time we came up with a decision there was some opposite way of looking at it that made it seem wrong.  This went on for many days.

            Finally, one day I said to myself “Just drop all the analyzing, and reasoning, and thinking about how to justify or defend whatever we decide to do, or what other people might think about it or how it would look—just drop it all and see what is left.  To my astonishment, when I did this complete and instant clarity emerged regarding what to do… I just knew what needed to be done and there were no doubts or second opinions-- and I didn’t feel like I needed to explain it to anyone. This is not to say I knew what everyone else should do in my situation, only that I knew with absolute clarity what was the right thing for me to do for Tasha. I told Sandy what had happened to me and I asked her to try the same approach.

            There is much more to consciousness than the mind and its thinking with concepts, words, its ideas, calculations, reasoning, categorizing, planning, analyzing, figuring things out…  But this is not to say the mind has no value—it has great value.  We need the mind to figure certain things out—how to build a house or a computer, how to keep track of money or food or store inventory…  But we also need to know when to step out of conceptual thought and just see and feel what is there.  Right here and right now.

            Also, sometimes analytical thinking, if it is skillful, can “prepare the soil” for the seeds of clarity to germinate and grow when we get quiet and drop the thinking.  This probably happened with looking at the Tasha decision from every perspective in the beginning.  But at some point, this can become endless and cause confusion and suffering, and we need to drop it and see what remains.  The lesson here was a powerful one for me.

            A few years later I discovered that what I had done was actually a central teaching of Lao Tsu, the creator of the Taoist tradition.  The Taoist tradition emphasizes the importance of quietude and assuming a stance of openness and receptivity.  We often rush into things and take action or try to immediately figure things out rather than first simply take in—receive-- what is going on in the present moment.

Suppose I need to travel on foot from where I am now at the edge of a forest to a point that is two miles away inside the forest.  My thinking mind may tell me to plot a straight-line course from point A to point B and then follow it.  I then put my plan into action and journey straight through the forest, going up over cliffs, through patches of thorny blackberries, through deep gorges, and over huge boulders.  I arrive at my destination two hours later, exhausted and with numerous cuts, bruises, and scratches.  Well, that’s one way of doing it!  I am attempting to force things, to forcefully bend reality to conform to my personal will and ideas.

            A student of Lao Tzu would take a very different approach.  Such a person would enter the forest a short way and then sit quietly in a state of relaxed, alert, receptivity.  After a while she becomes aware of the natural openings in the forest, sees the “big picture,” and sees the subtle “organization” of the forest.  As a result, she is able to move easily through the natural openings in the forest, perhaps in a roundabout way, to arrive uninjured and fresh at the destination in about half the time. 

In Taoist teachings, this open and receptive absence of thinking is called wu wei, and is usually translated as “creative quietude.”  The thinking mind recedes into the background and the more spacious faculty of pure awareness can shine through.  In Buddhism this is often described as simply being with whatever is present right here and right now without trying to figure anything out or describe it.  The Zen teacher Charlotte Beck has the following to say about it.

 

“When something really annoys us, irritates us, troubles us, we start to think.  We worry, we drag up everything we can think of, and we think and we think and we think—because that’s what we believe solves life’s problems.  In fact what solves life’s problems is simply to experience the difficulty that’s going on, and then to act out of that.  Suppose my child has screamed at me and told me I’m a terrible mother.  What do I do?  I could justify myself to her, explain all the wonderful things I did for her.  But what heals that situation, really?  Simply experiencing the pain of what is happened, seeing [observing] all my thoughts about it.  When I do that sincerely and patiently, I can begin to sense my child differently, and I can begin to see what to do.  My action emerges from my experience.  But we don’t do that with the problems of life; instead we spin with them, we try to analyze them or try to find who’s to blame for them.  And when we have done all that, we try to figure out an action.  That’s backwards.”      ---Every Day Zen: Love and Work, San Francisco:  Harper, 1989, p. 165.  Emphasis added.

            As with all Buddhist teachings, this is a practice—something that you do.  if you spend all your time analyzing the teaching and saying “Yes, but what about this and what about that…”  Well, that’s not what this teaching is about.  Try it out (more than once!) and see how it works in your own life.  I think if you stay with it, you will be pleasantly surprised!

  

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            If you have questions, comments, or ideas for new Blog topics please contact Dale at ahimsaacres@gmail.com.