Finding "The Way It Is"

This is the text of the essay, mentioned in the preceding post, which I submitted to Buddhadharma. Apparently they like it (yay!). It's somebody's intellectual property, I think, (mine? theirs?) so don't go co-opting what follows for your own nefarious dharma uses. But do enjoy.

I became a scientist because I wanted to understand how the mind works—how an entire consciousness can reside within a modestly-sized gelantinous mass of cells. What I actually learned during my short career as a neurobiologist and geneticist was how little we understand of the human experience. I couldn’t find myself in the convolutions of the cerebral cortex or the mechanisms of signal transduction—and although I wanted to, I couldn’t find a home within the scientific mindset. I didn’t enjoy debating a point; I didn’t think being a professor was the ideal use of my life. And I was devastated by the suspense of actually conducting experiments: years of labor might—or might not, in my case—yield a discovery worthy of publication. I was in a vibrant lab headed by a brilliant investigator, at a world-class research university, but as the days and years wore on, I felt unmotivated, then resentful, and then strangely proud of how bitter and burned-out I’d become. I developed a spectrum of stress-related medical problems: my jaw spasmed; my lungs constricted and my heart pounded; I couldn’t sleep at night or stay awake during the day. My original question about what it meant to be human had somehow lead to becoming inhuman: I had come to study the mind, and I was losing it instead.

What I found in Zen practice was more than pain relief. After years spent within a mechanistic paradigm of human existence, zazen returned me to the original question of what it is to be alive and aware. Perhaps by coincidence, my experiments started to work. I published a paper, received my PhD, and went to live full time in a Zen monastery.

Ajahn Sumedho’s powerful little book The Way It Is found me as I came full circle again: a familiar bitterness and stagnation had settled over me, now in the monastery rather than the laboratory. Poor attitude is no stranger to the monastic life is not unexpected: a certain existential desperation is part of the package. After months of living under others’ authority, following an unrelenting schedule, and having little personal time or space, even the heartiest practitioner may flag. The strategies of a competent adult living in the world no longer apply. In that context, intensive meditation (around a thousand hours per year) dissolves old habits and heightens experience in every way: joy and mystery burn brighter; and exhaustion, resentment and humiliation do, too. The process not always pretty, but the system endures because it does work—because people emerge from this arduous education knowing, and embodying, something of their true nature.

My own response to the inevitable discomforts of the monastic life had been to attack them. As far as I was concerned, my mind was real, the various assaults on my self were real, and the notion that pain could be vanquished by concerted effort was real. I took practice instruction (feeling the feeling rather than feeding the story; cutting off the self, moment by moment) to the point of torment. And it worked well enough, for about a year. Told in this way, it seems obvious that such a strategy would lead to exhaustion and bitterness—what a silly thing to do! But I don’t think I was inordinately confused; I suspect that most of us have tried to practice in this way, or still do.

Faced with this new/old difficulty, I began to suspect that neither academia nor monasticism were any more flawed than my own mind. If I could be miserable in the lab and miserable in the monastery, maybe I needed do something other than critique my surroundings. The Way It Is turned me towards where I needed to look: at the nature of the thoughts and feelings I was taking so seriously.

The book is a compilation of talks given by Ajahn Sumedho, mostly in the 80s, to monastics at Amaravati, a Theravada monastery in England. It is not “inspirational”; it does not offer solace, insight, or the assurance of a deeper meaning to life. Maintaining that those things cannot exist as we hope they do, Ajahn Sumedho tells his audience to forget about finding comfort, or anything else, through practice. “Inspiration,” he says, “is like eating chocolate: it tastes good and it’s very attractive but it’s not going to nourish you; it only energises you momentarily and that’s all it can do.” (p. 57) He says that “the religious experience is one of despair” and likens the “holy life” to a “holocaust, a total burning, a burning up of the self, of ignorance.”(p84) His discourse is plain and conversational, focusing on being present with the reality of life, which is that all things, including feelings and ideas, are anicca, anatta, dukkha (impermanent, without-self, unsatisfying).

These Pali vocabulary words were not entirely new to me, but until I read The Way It Is, I had failed to understand how thoroughly they apply to thoughts and feelings, to the sense of self itself. I had long since given up on reading dharma books, but I read this one, and read it again. Instead of trying to relentlessly cut off insult and pain, when those “opportunities” arose, I attended instead to the impermanence of the feelings, and of the self that feels. Allowing these to arise and cease in their own time—just as breakfast, daylight, breath, and joy also do—immediately provided real freedom within the fire.

There is more to this book: a refutation of any aspiration to greatness you might harbor (bad news of all who secretly hope to be found out as a tulku); a beautiful discourse on dependent origination; simple black-and-white photographs of Theravada monastic life. Anyone who is being consumed by life—as we all are—will find something of value here.

One day late last summer, this of news swept our monastery: Ajahn Sumedho was coming for a very brief, very informal visit! I was thrilled that I might be able to say how much I appreciated The Way It Is, and even have him autograph my copy. It was a nice idea. His party arrived, lunch was served, and Ajahn Sumedho sat down with our abbots to discuss the running dharma centers and guiding others in practice. There was no graceful way to insert myself or my request. And really, it didn’t matter. Ajahn Sumedho went on his way, and later that year, I went on mine.

I still hold the non-memory dear: to have encountered this great teacher without trying to turn the event into something special, feels simple and satisfying—the teaching of The Way It Is at work. Books, meals, careers and ideas all arise; they are as they are; and then they end:. I was a scientist, and now I’m not; I was a monastery resident and now I’m not. This letting everything be, as it is, is something I hope to do until there’s nothing left to be done.