Who would have thought this drama fun

by Fattah

I wrote a letter to The New York Times a couple of weeks ago. It was about the Iraq war and how we have totally trashed that country and now don’t know what to do. I find myself reacting to the war a lot. Any of us who remember Vietnam can see the parallels all too clearly: the country turning against a war that was ill-conceived from the start, the lack of action by the politicians in Washington to end the conflict, the patriots who believe we cannot accept defeat even though our strategy has failed to solve anything, the soldiers of the country we are occupying who can’t seem to take over their own defense, the population of the occupied country who are suffering so horribly in the situation. We are mired in another guerrilla war where we don’t know who is friend or foe, and we don’t know how to end it.

Unfortunately, war is the very nature of this world. From the time we first rose out of the muck, we have been fighting over turf and privilege and killing each other over who gets what. We see what we want and we don’t want to talk about it. We want to take it, even if it doesn’t belong to us.

For all our great learning and professed high ideals we see, we want, we take, and this primitive equation is the basis of most of the conflicts in the world. Those in power might try to make us believe that we are fighting for higher motives like saving the world from communism in Vietnam, or establishing democracy in the middle East, or protecting ourselves from terrorism – but at the heart of it we are fighting for what we want now or being able to get it in the future.

This is also true of the inner war we are all fighting. We see, we want, we get plays out over and over again in our daily lives. It’s a lot more complicated now than it was it ancient times. It’s no longer just food and shelter, but all the imaginings that advertising in our pop culture can stimulate. Can we get the richest, best tasting food, highly fashionable clothes, the most powerful and luxurious car, a large, comfortable home. We are told by some that these accoutrements are our birthright and if we can focus our will on having them we will get them. Are we willing to fight to make it happen? Certainly, although it will lead us into a struggle without end. What we get will never be enough. That’s what the millionaires and billionaires will tell you –it’s not enough. There will always be something more we want.

There is another type of inner war we are fighting. This is the war to make the world be the way we want it to be. This goes beyond our basic needs and desires. It is generated by both the way we view the world and how we would like it to be. We are great dreamers living in a world that is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and selfless. We try to deny these characteristics and believe that we can somehow avoid their harsh reality.

What usually occurs is that we delude ourselves until the realities of sickness, disease and death intrude in our daily lives to give us a wakeup call. We have not come into this world for self gratification or fulfillment. We have come here to see through the illusions of this life. Only that will end our suffering.

Part of this dream we are in is that if we can cling to the material part of this world it will give us more permanence. People like to accumulate a lot of stuff. We are always buying more or better furnishings, clothes, entertainment media, gadgets, automobiles. Stuff lasts a long time. Eventually our homes get full, and we have to rent storage space to accommodate more. This trend has created a huge boom in the rental storage space industry. We are storing more than we can ever hope to use, but we keep shopping. So shopping becomes a primal urge. It is so reassuring, so affirming of our presence in this world. If I have all this stuff, I have to be around to use it.

We can also cling by affirming our physical presence. We can take care of our body with exercise and diet. If we can stay fit, aging can be forestalled. Use the right moisturizers, some wrinkle cream, dye our hair to get rid of the gray, maybe a little plastic surgery, and we can continue to look young.

I try to stay young with exercise. I tell myself that if I can just continue my high quality workouts I won’t have to worry about aging. It seemed to work for me when I was in my thirties and forties but it’s no longer working for me in my fifties. Aging and disease have caught up with me. We can deny it for a long time, but eventually we start to wear out. We tire more easily, and when we get injured, it’s harder and harder to recover. The impermanence of the physical presents itself.

We cling to this life for three reasons. First there is the survival instinct that is so deeply ingrained in the primitive part of our brain. It’s fight or flight, and in emergencies it will take over and short circuit all our thinking. It’s a powerful, protective mechanism that soldiers often experience on the battlefield. They do things that they would never normally even consider doing to stay alive. After the episode, they look back and cannot deal with what they have done instinctually, in deep terror.

Many soldiers coming back from Iraq have experienced this. It’s called PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. They react from the primitive centers and then, later on, when they think about it, they are horrified at what they did. They feel guilty and become tortured and obsessed by the memories. They cannot accept what they, in great fear, instinctually did.

We cling to this life because we are all addicted to experiencing it. We believe that our random thoughts give us our life, but most of our life is produced by the chemicals of the lower centers of the brain and the brain stem. However good or bad the quality of our life, we are accustomed to feeling these chemicals in our bloodstream. They are produced in response to the stimulation of our daily living. Even those who we consider to have totally miserable lives for the most part, want to continue experiencing their existence in the way they always have.
Which substances we crave are established by the environment we were raised in, but we all want them. We have some ability to change what type of the chemicals we want, but part of the basic nature of our organism is to crave them. That is one reason that people who are deprived of outer stimulation tend to lose the will to live. No stimulation, less chemicals, less connection with life.

It’s interesting that this type of sensory deprivation is similar to some of the spiritual practices we do. No wonder people experience such a struggle with meditation, when we are so accustomed to our normal fix of these substances.

We also cling to this life because of the attachments we have to others. The thought of leaving those we are close to, especially on a permanent basis, is extremely hard to deal with. This goes beyond the physical world. When we care about people we take them into our hearts and they become part of us. We are tied to those we love in good and bad ways. The unseen bonds that give us support, allow us to be intimate, and unite us can also limit our growth and help keep us stuck in delusion.

The world’s unsatisfactory nature is also difficult to accept. We believe if we can gratify ourselves enough the world will seem better and we will be happier. I enjoy therefore I am happy. To some extent this works. My mother was an adherent of this theory. One of her favorite quotes was by Robert Louis Stevenson:

“The world is full of a number of things
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”

Unfortunately, if we’re always distracting ourselves with the pleasant, we miss the message living would bring to us, that life is unsatisfactory because we are living in illusion. This is the impetus we need to grow, to look beyond the life of the senses for true freedom. It’s like the Greek myth of (Sissy-fus) Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill only to have it fall back down before it reaches the top. We are always shaken out of our pleasant routines by life’s harsh necessity. We can never escape life’s unsatisfactory nature by pursuing gratification in the world.

Selflessness is probably the most difficult of the three to accept. We dream we are the doer and can’t even imagine an alternative. It’s inconceivable. In the West, we cultivate a strong ego so we will feel secure and dominate. I am great and in control of my life. We see that in those with a developed sense of self who accomplish great things in life. All the people we envy and choose to emulate, with very few exceptions, are those who are rich and powerful.

This is a great enigma, for at some level the ego knows itself to be a masquerader and is putting up a front to protect itself, protecting the illusion that we are independent individuals. The ego fears that it will be found out and will go to any extreme to avoid being unmasked.

We truly treasure this sense of self. This is who I am, even if our sense of self comes from negative beliefs. This is me. And we have deep suspicions that death will be the end of what I recognize as me. That’s why the idea of heaven or an afterlife is so appealing. Every religion has some particular idea of an afterlife or rebirth after death. Organized religion actually bolsters this sense of self in many ways. One of the most powerful is by claiming control of what will happen to us when we die. We want this self to continue on after our existence in the body ceases. We desperately want it to be true. And we want our loved ones to be there too, to meet us in the afterlife – even our pets. This is a perfect example of the great attachment we have to this ego. Generally, where there is great attachment there is great delusion.

Where are you fighting against the nature of life? Is it the impermanence? Most of us have difficulty when friends, relatives, or treasured pet die. My father experienced this. When my mother passed quite suddenly, he couldn’t accept it. He raged against the loss, and eventually ended up blaming God for taking her away. It was hard for him to grieve and let go, so he stayed angry for a long time. The only way he could try to hang onto her was to be mad.

I fight against the impermanence of life in my struggle with this body. It’s seems like I’m having to do more and more to maintain it and there is always something new coming up to be taken care of. I took my good health for granted. Most of us do.

Do you fight against the unsatisfactory nature of existence? We are trapped when we are caught up in seeking the pleasant and avoiding the unpleasant. “The painted ponies go up and down.” It’s a vicious cycle, and as we get older the equation changes, and there is more of the unpleasant to deal with.

Life is hard to accept. It will never be the way we want it to be. That’s where the dukka – suffering – comes in. We are always thinking life should be other than it is. We also think it will get better if we just keep doing the same things we have always done to cope with it.

For many years I thought if I could just get enough drama in my life I would be happy. I had great skills at creating situations in which I felt misunderstood and rejected. I have enough awareness now that I don’t get so caught up in the alienation but I still produce it. And I still have trouble feeling acceptance and appreciation from other people. I can see my strategy is not working but I keep using it.

At least now I can recognize being stuck in my old patterns. Sometimes I can choose a different approach. But it’s not really a matter of me choosing. It seems like the awareness does the choosing so it’s not an act of my will. It just naturally follows from the seeing.

Are you fighting with the past, not accepting your limited self, constantly frustrated with who you want to be, and not becoming more aware of the greater non-individual self with a capital S? We are so hard on ourselves. We want so badly to be fixed, to be perfectly adjusted to life. But we ain’t broke. We just need more awareness: awareness of the true nature of life, awareness of who we believe ourselves to be, awareness of the limitation of our outlook, and finally, awareness of the greater Self. We don’t know who we really are, we just know what we’ve been through. It’s true, there really is no you.

May we all come to this realization and share it with the world.
May all beings come to awakening, not one left behind.

Amein