It’s like the song says, “waking up is hard to do.” Or maybe that was breaking up. In either case, the process is as painful as it is necessary. It’s about change. And who doesn’t love to hate change?
Growing hurts. This is why the teachings of the Buddha begin with the Truth of Suffering. Because until we see how prevalent pain is in our lives, we keep our eyes closed to life otherwise. If we avoid hurt, we avoid love. If we attach to comfort too much, we avoid growth. Waking up implies the possibility of change. And change is painful. But it is also necessary for our mental, physical and spiritual health. When we are willing to change, we are willing to grow, to learn and to listen. And, if we are unwilling to change? Well, ask a dinosaur. Or, an Edsel.
The idea of waking up is that having committed to listening, learning and changing, we can look beyond our limited parochial viewpoint, and begin to see a greater expanse to life. It hurts to let go of the ties that bind us, and blind us, but if we begin to open to our experience we might begin to see vistas that had heretofore been secondhand. The more we awaken, the more we see feel taste touch and hurt. The more we awaken, the greater our capacity for love.
Meditation Master Chogyam Trungpa was asked by a student if the Buddha felt pain. His answer was “Oh, yes. Much more than we do.” You see, the more we awaken, the more we see. The more we see the greater we feel. The deeper we feel the more we know pain. When the Buddha left his life and began his journey to awakenment, he gave up all attachment to the comfort of his well appointed life. He had been a prince who grew up in his father’s estate. The king had kept him captive in golden chains, so to speak. The young prince wanted for nothing in that rarified life. He had all the things many of us are living our lives to have. One might say, giving our lives to have. We throw ourselves away in pursuit of the very trappings he felt imprisoned by. The Buddha had what many of us long for. And yet he still suffered. He looked beyond the walls of his life at people freer and more spiritually realized than he, and yet they suffered as well. There was more he yearned to understand about his life. When the teenage prince snuck out his window and escaped the castle walls, he began to see life as it really was. He saw suffering, fear, poverty, sickness and death. What the Buddha saw was life on life’s terms.
Once bitten by the bug of truth, it wasn’t long before he left altogether and set out on a journey to find truth and an honest relationship to life. His story, was one of walking through veils, of meeting and parting until he finally abandoned every crutch, and in exhaustion, simply sat. He just sat. His exhaustion stemmed perhaps from a series of disappointments that finally led to this state of noble hopelessness. Chogyam TRungpa suggested that we are very fortunate that the Buddha turned out to be a bad yogi. He tried everything, but nothing worked. Finally, he surrendered.
For many of us, this journey to now will not be about discarding our lives, w0rk or families. Romantic gestures reap further attachments. It’s easy to let go of a job we don’t want anyway. But, more to the point is letting go of systems of belief that keep us lulled into delusional states we feel we can control. The difference between the delusional states we normally inhabit and the awakened state is that the delusional life is a dream. The experiences we have are analogous to life, but they are not life, directly. They are archetypes, metaphors and symbols, a translation informed by mind’s prejudice. But they are not the direct contact to reality as it is. When the 12-step traditions refer to “life on life’s terms” they mean that becoming truly sober is letting go of all the ways we manipulate what we see feel taste and touch in order to distance ourselves from the sharp edges and possible disappointments in life. So often we squint and begin to see a version of the world that suits our own point of view and supports ego comfort. Yet, what is comfortable to the ego is sadly inadequate to our spiritual growth and survival.
Ego is ignorance. It is a version – or a series of versions – of reality that support our points of view, by limiting our access to what is actually there. It is like marshal law. Often enacted when we are triggered (and ironically in need an honest assessment), the ego takes over and monitors the system by limiting access to information, replacing news with propaganda. It also imprisons the creative force within us, shutting down arts, magic and poetry because we need to hunker down and protect ourselves. Nose to the grindstone. I never got how that protects anyone.
We live in a police state of mind and our only recourse is to do the same set of things again and again in a misguided attempt at finding freedom through limiting ourselves to these sets of circumstances we think we can control. The fact that it ends badly again and again doesn’t seem to dissuade us. We are so change-averse, we choose the devil we know again and again. That is why it is said that “disappointment is the chariot of the path.” Once we are forced to face life not going our way, we eventually have little recourse but to let go. And letting go, as painful as it is, is key to waking up.
The young prince sat beneath the tree. He was exhausted from his journey, but also from intense fasting. It was the latest in a series of spiritual things he had tried to find enlightenment. But, even spiritual things, though well intended, are just “things”. So even our methods of attainment, must be let go. Maybe especially our spiritual ambitions. Ego absolutely loves using its own destruction as the purpose of its aggrandizement.
Finally, he accepted a small bit of gruel and milk. AAS the story goes, that that was when, seated beneath the Bodhi tree, he attained the awakened state.
It is possible that it was not a glorious event. It is very possible that his enlightenment occurred when he simply stopped looking for answers and simply saw what was there. It must have been quite sad, heart broken and lonely. There was this amazing moment of grand synchronicity, but, who could he tell? Who would understand? Nonetheless, people began to notice. A woman passing by stopped and asked who he was. He looked to her, but had no need for his name, his title, his position. He said simply “I am awake.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
He touched the ground. “The earth is my witness,” he said.
All he had at that moment was his connection to now. Right now. He touched the earth, his home and destiny, but all importantly his present moment. Now.
We will NOT wake up someday. We can only wake up now. And it might not be an awesome event. It might be lonely and empty. But in that emptiness lies the greatest richness of all. Once we give up everything, we gain a great synchronicity with all of life. We own what the trees and rocks and flowers own. We are life itself. Once we own nothing, we owe nothing. And we are free. Awakened and free.
I’m making this sound quite regal and dramatic, which would have been a cool way to end a post. But, maybe that misses the point. Waking up, like breaking up, is very hard and painful. And the journey is so exhausting, there will likely be no one there at the end to applaud. There may be no one there at all. Only the earth. And the singular moment we call now.