Social Fear, a Sutra, and a Dream...

I'm having a hard time finding my way in the world after 2.5 years of monastic life. I occasionally feel really lost, and when I do, an old karmic propensity comes up: the inability to contradict anyone.

Even when I happen to have a PhD in the field they're bithely misunderstanding.

Or maybe because of that PhD. I really despised the argumentative culture of academia. I never learned to deal with it, and it occasionally got so bad that it was disruptive (as when I would leave lab meetings after the first two hours of arguing, forcing my advisor to tell me that wasn't acceptable).

This morning at 3:30 (when all the demons come home) I was struggling with this feeling of complete paralysis and self-betrayal. The feeling afterward, of having denied my truth, and being really dirty, is..of course... the same feeling that gives rise to an avoidance of conflict so profound that it paralyzes even silly, nonconfrontational situations.

Years ago, someone shared with me a quote from Suzuki Roshi, which really confounded me. Something like "Regretting things you've done is silly. The regret is itself the same energy that propelled you to the unskilful action in the first place."

After chewing on it for a while, I started to understand that failing to accept this life exactly as it is is the underlying delusion; "poor me" (especially the "me" part) drives selfish, stupid behavior, and it drives regret when the consequences of that behavior manifest; it drives an selective obliviousness to karmic results of karmic action.

So inferiority breeds more inferiority, and there is no way to get untrapped by running around that circuit.

The way these habitual tendencies do finally snap is by insight. Recognizing at the beginning that if I go down this road, I know exactly what the consequences will be like. And it's going to hurt a lot less to cut the crap now, rather than to do the same old thing yet again.

2500 years ago, the Buddha taught

When you know for yourselves that "these mental qualities are unskilful; these mental qualities are blameworthy; these mental qualities are criticized by the wise; these mental qualities when acted on bring harm and suffering" then abandon them.

When you know for yourselves that "these mental qualities are skilful; these mental qualities are blameless; these mental qualities are praised by the wise; these mental qualiites when acted on lead to well-being and happiness" then follow them.

Dharma Teacher Larry Rosenberg has opined that this sutra can stand as the centerpiece for study: it offers a sensible skepticism for those inundated by the various offerings of the modern spiritual marketplace, just as the Kalamas were trying to sort out competing doctrines in a period of spiritual ferment 2500 years ago. (Rosenberg's excellent article in an old Tricycle magazine explores this topic further.)

I began by suggesting that monastic life somehow exacerbated the problem of intellectual inferiority. My experience was that a number of my associates would probably characterize me as anything but intellectual shy— more of a know-it-all, a person who tells the teacher they're mistaken.

It's true that I did contradict teachers when they got something wrong. It's also true that I experienced the mental formations of estrangement, and the notion that speaking up as I did made me unpopular. Who knows where the truth lies; with this much baggage, no one can say. Anyway, I experienced estrangement, or subtly being shot down, ignored, etc., and I came to choose my battles very carefully.

Asking Fr Kennedy Roshi to explain why he would teach an advanced doctrine amounting to "not a single thing exists, including karmic consequences"— without first giving a grounding in ethics and in the dharma as it applies to the relative world—was one such case. It was important enough that I couldn't sit there and not speak.

But at that moment, I didn't feel lost: I was in Belfast and I was found.

I do not feel that way now. And someone mistaking the corpus callosum for the thalamus is frankly a lot less crucial. As is misunderstanding my random musings about human postnatal neurological development. The problem is not the promulgation of a particular misconception. The problem is that I shut myself up.

The solution is the teaching of the Kalama Sutra: You see that it's not working. In fact, it hurts. So DON'T DO IT. Buddhism is very simple. Just not easy.

Perceiving the painful consequences and altering our response has to take place from exactly where we're at. No point in hating karma, as Suzuki Roshi said. Our practice is as who we are, right now. And who I am is: occasionally totally stymied by group dynamics, be the in a lab, a monastery, or and informal conversation.

So the monastery is not the problem. It's an unrelenting version of a research lab, a place that takes 100% of your energy, rather than 85%. Indeed, the introspective tools I learned in that environment are priceless. Just to be willing to minutely look at mental phenonmena and feelings—without launching into a narrative that reinforces delusion—was a huge hurdle of faith. Not to believe my own mind; who would think that would be the gateway to some sort of freedom?

After sitting with these feelings (less verbally than presented here!), I went back to sleep.

There's a group of people here from my present and past. Some misunderstanding between myself and another person has come up.

There's that feeling: that I shouldn't say anything, even though what's going on is really wrong. I realize I can't do it; it's just not worth the ongoing baggage of feeling misunderstood and unseen by the other person.

What's more, I realize that other people in the group, if they're anything like me (of course, they ARE me; it's a dream) might have issues with one another as well. What if there was some format for talking out the old grievances? What if people who sensed the air needed to be cleared could volunteer, and their associates could approach them with anything that felt unresolved?

So I say something: I ask the group if anybody wanted to offer to talk to others about any outstanding interpersonal issues. Most of the people raise their hands. I am surprised at how many confident-seeming folks are hoping to resolve something that has gone on too long. I take their names.

Then I go into a room where animals are kept in cages. It seems only fair to ask if any of them are open to hearing about unresolved relationship stuff. Sure enough, the rats want to clear the air, and the chickens do, too. Even the Daddy Longlegs in its web is hoping to discuss old misunderstandings. Only the juvenile mice aren't interested. Maybe they haven't been around long enough.

The affecting thing for me was that 1. so many people had a felt there was something "hanging over" a relationship, 2. so many people wanted to make things right, and 3. even the beings with the simplest, most constrained lives had built up some relationship karma, and yearned for resolution.

Of course this is a dream, not the "real" world, but to me it holds some truth. And within that world, to choose to speak up, to imagine that others might feel similiarly constrained by past omissions, and to offer them—all parts of myself, in some sense—the structure to resolve their misunderstandings...well, it offers some hope for waking life.

...So is this Fleeting World.