Category: EVENTS

Where Do We Go If We Let Go?

 

I was heading into a massage session when the instructor entering behind me gently touched my upper back. She leaned over my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “what do you think will happen if you let go” and pressing the point said, “right here?” It was stunning. My tears welled up. I didn’t know what it was, but I had been carrying it around since I was a child forever being the good soldier.

Why not let go? What will happens if I lose? What the hell am I trying to prove? What is it I’m carrying?

I can be like a dog with a bone sometimes. When I’m passionate about something I hate the idea of letting go. It’s mine, damn it, even if it’s hurting me. But that’s me. Everyone has their own style of attachment. And attachment will always lead to struggle because we’re trying to hold something still in a universe that is always moving. Reality is stretching and expanding, dissolving and moving away from us, as we desperately cling and grab to anything we can. Oh what joy when we find that bone to gnaw!

The late absurdist auteur, David Lynch, once drew a multi-frame cartoon he called “The Angriest Dog in the World.” It was a picture of a dog straining against its tether growling fiercely, that was copied in several frames unchanging, as day turned to night, the the seasons changed around him.

I kind of loved that guy. I think we admire people who are fighting cancer, or refusing to go gently into the night. There seems to be virtue in struggling against the laws of the universe.

One thing about human experience is when something goes awry, it reminds us how little control we have. This makes us feel small. When things don’t go our way, it’s not a punishment. It’s an opportunity to adjust and even grow. But it generally feels pretty bad.

On the other hand, when things work out the way we expect, or better than we expect, there is no end to the auto-backslapping. Perhaps it’s best to employ the middle path and not to take too much credit. It’s just life. It happens to all of us.

But it’s not about any of us.  Still, this stubborn Taurus often feels there must be something at the end of the struggle other than a pile of discarded discord.

Once I’m engaged in a struggle, I seem to have to prove something to somebody. I’m going to save this relationship, or I’m going to tell this person off though I never do and just toss about in my bed all night.  At some point, I’m just struggling for the struggle. I’m attached to the energy. Attachment brings suffering—I’ve done the research—and it’s a pretty universal human experience. When we grab hold of something we deem important, we don’t want to let it go. Our ego latches on, and whatever grand justification we started with, the war becomes all about us.

Whether we’re gnawing on a bone to pick or basking in a relationship we hope will never end, we’re stuck in attachment. No matter the rationale, the outcome is suffering.

When we grip tightly enough, we lose sight of the suffering altogether. We keep going because after all the investment, letting go feels frightening. Being right and refusing to listen can feel like strength, like clarity—but it isn’t clarity at all. It’s ego blindness. The part of us that needs to prove a point takes over. Our view becomes so narrow, so refined, so focused on our objective that it feels like certainty.

Neil deGrasse Tyson says one obstacle in science is when people know enough to think they’re right, but not enough to see they’re wrong. Since we actually don’t know, the wiser move is to let go.

Letting go doesn’t mean we’re wrong. It isn’t judgment or punishment. It’s a physical experience of loosening our grip.

Dogs eventually have to drop the bone to eat. Children eventually leave the tattered, saliva-ridden doll behind when they go to school. The attachment was soothing—but it isn’t sustainable.

Everything changes. Everything is subject to the movement of the universe. Things only appear solid and unchanging. Great pain comes from believing “this is the way it is,” or knowing it will change but insisting it change our way. Needing control, we choose to suffer, holding onto it, growling if anyone tries to take it away.

I once said to a struggling student, “Have you noticed how when you’re tired and underslept, everything feels more important and more dangerous?” She stared at me with dagger eyes and said “no.” An amazing teaching: sometimes the best thing is to shut up and let people discover it themselves.

Surrender means letting go with body, spirit, and mind. Wherever we’re gripping, there’s tension in the body. Feeling that tension, knowing it’s causing discomfort, and doing nothing to fix the story is the first step. We get addicted to the drama because it feels like control.

Letting go in spirit means releasing our attachment to how the struggle makes us feel—powerful, victimized, justified. Letting go in the mind is harder. We don’t just “stop thinking.” We replay arguments in bed at night. The way out is through love and kindness, drawing the attention out of the body. Until we let go of attachment to feeling bad or feeling victorious, we keep planting seeds of suffering.

Love naturally brings openness and surrender. Mindfulness helps us remember that whatever we latch onto becomes inaccurate and becomes suffering—for us and often for others.

In 12-step communities they say, let go and let God. In the Pentecostal tradition I grew up in, surrender was physical—tears, release, catharsis. In Buddhist tantric traditions, a transmission can release gripping in an instant, sometimes with nothing more than a clap of the hands. Letting go doesn’t have to be heavy. It can be joyous. A relief. An offering.

As we surrender and let go of proving anything, our body softens, the struggle ends, and we sit upright and open. We are making an offering to the universe, while allowing ourselves a fresh start.

Is Where We Are

The good news is, you’re already here. The trick is to remember that.

And to recognize that.

And to experience that here, now.

It’s easy. Maybe too easy? We seem to want dramatic solutions to dramatic problems. We take classes in cognitive awareness, feel crystals, and throw the I Ching. The more anxious we feel, the more effort we think we need to escape. But when our thinking is hijacked by an inflamed brainstem, simply coming back to now can bring us into alignment and return us to an optimum mental state. As humans, we have evolved to employ higher mental functioning, but we need clarity of mind to fully access that state. Unfortunately, we’ve retained shadows of a less awake, fearful, scurrying mind that sometimes hijacks or clouds our reasoning. Reasoning becomes overthinking,  catastrophic thinking or distracted escapism. When our thinking is compromised, we would do well to pay less attention to the narrative of our thoughts and more attention to recognizing when the mind is distracted it’s thinking.

When we train in meditation, we are training to notice when the mind is distracted and to bring it back to the present. We don’t need deep psychological reasoning for this process. In fact, the simpler we keep it, the better. We notice, we return, and we do all of this with no judgment, no explanation, no concepts at all.

Quite simply, what is happening now? What am I experiencing now in the simplest, most tactile way? Not grand ideas, but simply the experience of my hands, feet and breath.  Letting go of ideas of what we think is happening, we turn our attention to our feet on the ground. I mean really do that. Really feel your feet on the ground. Not think about it. Just feel your hands on the desk or your thighs. Bring yourself back home. You can do this walking around your kitchen when anxiety arises. Come back to  the experience of your feet on the floor. It’s that simple to break the momentum of panic, thinking and fear.

Aside from placing a gap in the panic, being aware of ourselves, and parts of ourselves, is comforting to the frightened part of us that can take over our whole day.

Mindfulness of mind means noticing when the mind has hijacked us, taking center stage with some thought or idea that obscures everything else we might see. Mindfulness of being awake in the present moment reminds us to come back to what is verifiably happening, such as the breath or our posture. When the mind notices itself, that noticing is happening in the present. But when the mind gets lost in the narrative of its thinking, we are no longer in the present. We are removed from it.

Most of the time we are lost in regret over some past action or anticipation of some future occurrence, and both of these are imagined circumstances. When we bring ourselves back to our body, that is actually happening here. We can take solace in that. We can begin to feel grounded when we return.

That said, coming back to the present and then judging that experience—such as noticing how distracted the mind is or believing we have to apply ourselves further—are also thoughts that are not actually in the present. They are closer to the present than imagining we are in Tahiti on the beach, but they are still one step removed because we are talking to ourselves about the present. The experience of the present is nonconceptual.

There is a great irony in the art of meditation: being grounded in reality is not what we think. Being grounded in reality is an experience. Mindfulness of mind is the experience of stepping back and seeing what the mind is doing from a grander perspective. It is like a snapshot, and as soon as we start commenting on that snapshot, we darken our connection to the experience. We confuse it. We complicate it.

The aim of meditation is not to become better, smarter, or more productive. The aim of meditation is to become here and be awake right now, in this moment. As simple as that sounds, this is considered both the primary practice and the pinnacle experience of meditation training in the Tibetan Buddhist systems. When we are fully here, we are fully connected to the inherent wakefulness of the universe. As soon as we think about that, we take a step away from the experience.

Mindfulness, then, is the subtle and nuanced process of stepping back in order to see our experience without stepping into conceptualization. We are looking at the mind rather than being lost in the mind. The mind seeing itself is considered a sacred moment in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. As soon as we congratulate ourselves or conceptualize the process, we step away from that experience.

The pinnacle position for the meditator is to be in the present experience without comment, concern, or criticism. When those things arise, as they naturally do, the process of recognizing them and coming back to the breath, the feet, and the hands is the process of waking up. We are training the mind to recognize distraction and to recognize presence.

The process of coming back here becomes easier and more efficient when we train ourselves to recognize both distraction and what it feels like to be here. Without complication, our feet are on the ground, our hands are on our thighs, and the mind is returning to its resting on the breath. This gives us a base to which we can return anytime.

As Lennon sang, “wherever you are, you are here.”

 

Turning Loneliness Toward Aloneness

 

Everybody wants to belong. That drive, a primal self-defense embedded deep in our psychology, is so strong that when we don’t belong to something it feels empty and frightening. We often interpret that as a failing on our part. Hence, for some of us, being alone is torturous. I would fill up the space with an overactive brain. I have a joke I tell that every sexual encounter I’ve ever had was a threesome: me, my partner, and my brain.

I was the eldest child, and the oldest of my closest cousins. My affinity was for adults, and I had a mild disdain for other kids. Like a lady cat who feels affection for her owners, but has no time for other animals. Hence, I spent a lot of time with the ladies in the kitchen or alone in my room. My mom said I would “explode,” making screaming crowd noises when I imagined myself leading a rock band, or make bomb noises exploding when I was leading troops into battle. I would be the hero, have no fear, and experience no pain. I learned to find some simple genius in my room and occupied the space that otherwise so frightened me. I carried that soothing albeit violent noise around my head growing up, never understanding the life I was missing.

In time, that nagging sense of missing out on something led me to search for meaning, belonging, or anything that might calm the scratchy uneasiness I felt. I would sit in bookstores and thumb through books from Crowley to Ram Dass. I tried meditation in many traditions. At the Zen Center, I was asked to sit in the hall because I couldn’t sit still.

Eventually I came across the work of Chogyam Trungpa. The fact that he was rather infamous appealed to a rebellious part of me that feared indoctrination. Discovering meditation gave me a way of filling that inner space with experiential learning.

My inner conversations began to turn from entertaining myself toward personal development. I was still filling up space, but now I had something useful to tell myself. Trungpa made a distinction between loneliness and aloneness. Loneliness was a suffering ego state, that was so narrow we were not accepted and had no place to belong. Ego had grown too inflamed to fit anywhere, and hence I was never feel comfortable in the ordinary space of life. “I don’t belong here” might have been less about others looking down on me, bullying me, or not accepting me, and more about me trying to bully myself into being more than I needed to be. Maybe I didn’t belong because I was trying so hard to be accepted.  Maybe I had forgotten how to be who I was.

Or maybe I never knew. Maybe none of us do. Perhaps the only ones who feel comfortable in themselves are those who aren’t looking. I loved the scene in Annie Hall when Woody Allen wonders why some people seem so together and decides to ask a beautiful couple passing on the street. “What’s your secret?” he asks. They stare blankly back, blink, shrug and say that they are simply vapid and superficial.

So are we destined to writhe in the turmoil of unsettled being or simply check out and join a cult? Many people driven by the insecurity of loneliness join movements led by charismatic figures who seem to supply them with the confidence they lack. That dynamic becomes heightened when the leader points to those we should blame for our woes. Once we have the bogey people, we can feel united with others in our ire. People lacking in self-acceptance and awareness are ripe to be led. The drive for acceptance is so strong we will sell our souls to feel united.

Thank goodness for the congenitally cynical. A slogan posted at Trungpa’s center said, “A healthy distrust of the rules will bring success.” He didn’t encourage anyone to be a joiner. He didn’t expect anyone to believe what they did not discover for themselves. Meditation, free of manipulation, is pointing to what is already there, not making shit up to make us feel better. Tara Brach teaches about “radical acceptance” — accepting the shadow, the doubt, the fear, and the loneliness.

Accepting loneliness means we can rest in our unease without trying to fix it. When we are able to rest in the places we are less comfortable, when we are less willing to throw ourselves away just to belong, we begin to really know ourselves. Loneliness becomes aloneness. Aloneness is a space of self-acceptance. When we accept ourselves, our ego can relax and become less inflamed. Then there is more space for everything else — for everyone else. People have room to be themselves instead of feeling coerced. Self-acceptance allows others to feel less pressured and more inclined to accept us. Ironically, the crippling need to be accepted had become an obstacle to acceptance.

Once free of the need to occupy myself, once I was willing to accept me and the moment I was in, once I loosened the grip of needing acceptance from others, I found I could make decisions for myself. If I was wrong, then it was mine. Nothing is set in stone except our gravesites.

The fact is we were born alone despite all the fuss around us. And we will die alone despite all the fuss. If we accept being alone, we can become free of the crippling need to belong to anything just to be part of something. Then I think it’s possible to become part of everything.

Or, like Buddha’s hot dog — one with everything.

 

The Power of Love to Heal a Broken World.

If we’re unhappy with who we are, how we are, or the world we live in, we must first see our situation clearly before anything can change. The first step is recognition—knowing what’s happening and seeing that whatever arises externally in the world is echoed within our own hearts and minds. This isn’t to say we align with the hatred, bigotry, or aggression around us, but that all of those forces reside in every human being. They’re activated whenever we give them credence, become trapped in their logic, and start believing in the power of hate.

Hating those who hate is a vicious loop—like Ouroboros, the mythical snake eating its own tail. There is no fruit in hatred, no matter how justified it seems. Justification often leans on logic, and logic is easily skewed to support beliefs. If we can’t fully trust the news or the internet, we certainly can’t blindly trust the internal arguments we build to justify anger. We don’t have to clear all darkness within us before trying to change the world, but we do need to acknowledge that we’re all prone to aggression. Those who promote love aren’t free of hate; they’ve learned to see it and step beyond it.

Fear, hatred, and anger are natural human responses—especially in times of struggle. The warrior principle says we can recognize, accept, and then move beyond these reactions of body and mind. I’m depressed—I see that and accept it, but I’m not limited by it. I’m angry—I understand that, but I don’t have to react to it. I can use it as fuel. I’m frightened—seeing that offers power, for how often have my mistakes and aggression been rooted in fear? By noticing fear, even when subtle, and looking into our behavior, we can use it as a stepping stone through the doorway of clarity and compassionate action. Our afflictions may lie dormant and still affect the world, or we can push them away as beneath our virtuous image, or act them out and create more aggression. But there’s another way: accept the feeling and step beyond it.

How do we do this? With love. By recognizing a problem and accepting it, we can look into it and see what motivates it underneath. Then we can affect change through positive means. Positive actions don’t create karma in the same way negativity does. They are steps toward healing, requiring patience, perseverance, and the softening of ego. Negative karma happens instantly—when we lash out in anger before seeing or feeling the situation, we open ourselves to resistance and create more hatred. When we recognize and accept the problem, look under it, and see the forces at play, we find common ground with aggressors. By accepting their behavior as human and historically repeated, we create an opening for change.

Compassion takes many forms. I think of a video of a baby bear running along a highway against a guardrail, its mother on the other side. When she had the chance, she grabbed the cub and yanked it over the rail, tossing it into the woods. It wasn’t gentle, it wasn’t sweet.it wouldn’t show up on a cute animals video, but it was compassionate—she did what was needed to protect her child. Compassion manifests in many ways, like Avalokiteshvara with 10,000 arms, each representing an expression of love. So when faced with aggression, soft, sweet love may not be our best approach. But reacting from righteousness—believing we’re right and others are wrong—locks us back into hatred devouring itself. We must step back, release panic and inner aggression, accept what’s happening, and look beneath it for energies that can meet in real communication.

Whether soft or fierce, quiet or loud, compassionate action is effective because it’s not a reaction from the lower mind, but a higher power within us radiating healing as best it can. Our work is to step beyond personal aggression and communicate clearly with the world.

Retreat is not surrender. Surrender is not defeat. Defeat is not the end. The end is only a beginning. By surrendering our point of view, anger and hatred, we are able to face the world and see clearly what the most effective way of healing our broken world. That’s love, in whatever form it takes. And love is the most effective step toward change.

By looking at the world, we are showing we care. We are not abandoning it. By acknowledging our own doubt, we can step toward healing. Our work is to persistently, doggedly, continually, push back against hatred with love, humor, and kindness.  Our only justification being that this is the best thing to do.

Perhaps it’s the only thing to do.

 

       THE NARCISSISTIC REFLECTION OF EGO

I like to reference Milan kundera’s The Incredible Lightness of Being when discussing ego by reversing the logic to the incredible heaviness of being … me.

Ego is a shallow reflection, an inordinately pronounced subset of mind charged with aligning ourselves with the societal acceptance. Shallow as it may be the need for societal acceptance is nonetheless deeply ingrained within us. Our need to “fit in” is an ancient protective strategy. Without the acceptance of our clan, we would fend for ourselves.  At some point in our history, that would render us some predator’s lunch. The need to assimilate is, at its core, a protective strategy. Ego aligns us with what society seems to require—sometimes to shield us, sometimes to make us competitive, sometimes to keep us hidden. Whenever we feel threatened—by external pressures or internal doubts—ego steps in. For those who have lived through trauma, the ego’s protective reflex can become inflamed. And like any inflammation, it grows painful, restrictive, and difficult for both ourselves and others to be around.

Ego inflation is not unlike economic inflation, as when the value of currency diminishes, everything else becomes more expensive. Likewise, when ego expands, our sense of worth actually decreases, and we must spend more psychic energy maintaining the story of “me.” The more bereft we feel, the more inflamed ego becomes. It is a costly burden—like lugging around a heavy suit of armor, or as Milan Kundera might put it, the “incredible heaviness of being me.”

Ironically, while ego is designed to connect us with others, it often serves to separate us. The more it inflates, the less it sees—both of the world and even of the self it is meant to protect. Ego seems to operate behind a firewall: impenetrable, self-justifying, resistant to inspection. We rarely glimpse what lies beyond, because ego convinces us its stories are the truth. We see what ego wants us to see. Self-awareness becomes diminished, lost in reflection of a small, superficial self-image.

Yet ego’s strategies are not only aggrandized. It has many “small” strategies such as feeling inadequate, playing the victim, hoping to be seen, or withdrawing because attention feels insufficient. They may look different—grandiosity, self-pity, defiance, or despair—but they share a common thread: they make life all about me. When ego dominates, we are not listening to others. We are manipulating, trying to coerce the world into affirming a version of ourselves that we are desperately telling ourselves.

Sometimes the weight of this self reflection means we expect too much of ourselves and our world. Like an inflamed infection, our ego inflation becomes painful. We are lying in wait for someone of something to insult or disappoint us. I have been avoiding a community meeting which is very large, and I feel no one notices me. This is true, but most of the people there are unnoticed unless they share. But I keep myself bottled up out of fear of looking foolish. This is not humility. Its ego. By withdrawing, I deprive myself of any connection and benefit I might receive. Who am I hurting? Ego, in its fear of invisibility, tricks me into actually vanishing.

This is ego’s paradox. It promises safety by keeping us in control, but the cost is limiting everything to that which it can control.  And that is a much tighter set than makes me feel comfortable. So, I tend to blame others for not knowing me. Not seeing this delicate flower with is poisonous spines.

A classic ego refrain is That’s not me. I could never do that. But not out of discernment, out of fear of failure. And in so doing, ego robs us of the chance to learn, grow, and risk being seen in our fullness. How many opportunities have we refused simply because we lacked the energy to drag our own self-importance along?

The “heaviness of being me” rarely translates into the world in the way ego imagines. Instead, it leads to exhaustion and estrangement. To carry one’s importance everywhere is to carry a burden that no one else asked us to shoulder. The question arises: how important must we be to ourselves? What would it feel like to be less important—to set down this inflated carriage of “me”?

Dylan suggested, “I’m not here.” Buddhism teaches that ego is ultimately empty. My teacher once smiled at a question about how to work with ego and answered, “there is nothing to work with, because it doesn’t exist.” Perhaps the answer is to look beyond the event horizon of self-protection and see that the reflection is entirely made up.

Maybe this challenge becomes an invitation: to loosen the grip of this Michelin-man suit of self-importance, to move more lightly, and to test what life feels like when not filtered through our defenses. How exhausting it is to carrying the weight of “me” everywhere. What would it be to look beyond ourselves and meet the world directly, unburdened and free.

Maybe the key is to stop fixating on the reflection and working so hard to believe it so so we can see what else we can be.

MONKMODER DOOMSCROLLING

 

Like monks facing the maelstrom, we have may have our best intentions and ethical training. And yet, we may feel paltry and inadequate standing in the face of hatred and conflict.

Our society is currently at war. Those who have chosen a side may have the luxury of being determined and clear. They are able to push through the chaos with a surety that those who feel deeply cannot. But what of those who wish to understand or listen? Their experience is less assured. In fact, their experience might be disconcerting and painful.

Those trained in the ways of compassion will feel the need to help assuage the violence they see. Yet, how can we do so without declaring a side? Once we have taken a side, the other side will likely no longer be listening. The irony of side taking is that the very people who may need to hear what we have to say, are likely to not listen. This is why commitment to nonviolence is so frustrating in the short term, but yields more effective change over time. So how do we deal with the impulse to react with our guts in knots and our mind aflame?

A Bodhisattva must first train to calm their own passions before they have the clarity to help others.  When facing chaos, we may feel the need to do something. And yet, the nature of chaos is unclarity.  A general rule is when the world is chaotic and uncertain turn our attention to ourselves. Change what we can change.  If we could breath, relax and bring ourselves back to balance, we might see the pattern in the confusion. And like all patterns this has happened before and will happen again. From this point of view, the idea that there is a “right side” is absurdly reductive.

If scrolling through your doomfeed makes you angry, frightened or depressed it’s because 1) you care and 2) you have no idea how to help.  So the Bodhisattva is trained to rest in the chaos until a natural confluence emerges. And how might a natural confluence differ from taking sides? From the Buddhist perspective, the view is fostering kindness and compassion. If the world is falling apart, we can choose to add no harm and sit in the turmoil until our time for compassionate action becomes clear.

Water flows into water — sometimes quite rapidly, with significant turbulence. But this is not the fault of the river. Nor is it the fault of society, the world, or even our political systems when they undergo upheaval. Change is not an anomaly; it’s a basic rhythm of human experience on this planet. The planet changes. The climate changes. Political systems around the world shift, often with great pain or even lockdown. From a data point of view, the problem is not change — it’s the challenge of navigating change when we cannot control the outcome.

The work is for us to relax into not being able to predetermine results. Facing this chaos all while maintaining an upright posture of goodness, dignity, and strength. We might experience fear and resentment, but these, as is said, are like drinking poison expecting our adversaries to become ill. Usually, the others just go on their merry way, defiling and defaming others, and we are left feeling ill. Thus we become weak and unable to help anyone. Our first step in warrior training is to hold our seat and gather our strength. The next step is to adopt a posture of bravery and simply represent goodness without proclamation, arrogance or aggression.

Until we’re able to manifest dignity and strength we may become victims. Or worse yet, we may blindly react and become part of the problem.

This is why we need mindfulness, intention, and clarity about what we are doing. We need to interrupt immediate, automatic reactions. Yet these reactions happen so quickly it’s like trying to corral a bull after it’s broken free of its pen. Wherever we catch ourselves bringing aggression into our body or mind, we can just stop. Avoid blame, as blame, which feels so justified, only serves to perpetuate aggression and blindness. Anytime we become aware of the hijacking of our body by fear — whether anticipating what might happen, experiencing it as it unfolds, or reflecting on it afterward — we become more attuned to this very immediate and incredibly powerful process. Simply said, our mind and body are being hijacked by our own nervous system. It’s no one’s fault. However, it is our chore to work with. The work is to free the body, open the heart and let the mind see before we jump into the fire.

It’s natural to want to protect ourselves. But it is not natural to scapegoat a segment of society, to cling to resentment, or to nurture hatred in our heart. The issue here is not “right-wing” versus “left-wing.” The issue is that when we blame others, we harm ourselves. The violence we inflict on ourselves is profound, especially when we mask it as blame toward others.

When we are awake and open to our immediate experience, our natural human dignity will allow us to do the right thing. When we are reactive, our basic animal instinct only pushes us into ignorance. By creating a gap before acting out retribution, we can hold our reactions lightly, release them, and see more clearly. Otherwise, we’re not only grabbing the bull after its left the pen, we’re letting it carry us as it may — all while blaming someone else for leaving the gate open.

 

Understanding Refuge in Modern Times

Ever wish you could just run and hide? Ever play hide and seek with your life because it all becomes too heavy? Do you ever reach for the panic-button in reaction to difficulty? Ever slump in discouragement because it’s all on you, but you just can’t figure it out?

Well, maybe it is on you. But maybe it’s not your fault.

Many of us have never learned to see our lives as they are. Many of us have never learned how to think. We just accept the mind’s confusion, blame our woes on others, and pray for a way out. But maybe there is no way out, except to be here—to learn to see what’s happening and work through it.

We can do this. With patience, kindness, and love, we can gain agency in our lives. We can become players instead of victims—if we are willing to learn. In Buddhism, we look to the example of an enlightened mind, which reflects the enlightenment inherent in all of us.

It takes training to learn to see beyond the compulsive thinking that grasps at the wrong straws. We create more confusion out of a confused world when we blindly reach for what we think will save us. This might be as grand as a lifelong commitment to a nation or spiritual community—or as quick and impulsive as a harsh word, or hitting “send.”

When we feel pressured and need relief—when we’re challenged, triggered, or brutalized by life—our immediate defense is often to lash out. We turn to anger and aggression, or to something or someone we hope will save us. Or we retreat to a private island in our mind, looking for refuge.

But when we seek refuge in something not grounded in what is, we only deepen our confusion. We stop learning.

Throughout history, there have been countless religious, cultural, and commercial icons of refuge. Yet—if you’ll grant me a cliché—wherever you go, there you are.

And if we’re not willing to be here, how can we ever move beyond?

We’ve taken the beautiful teachings of Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha and used them to condemn one another—or to save ourselves. Perhaps we spin on a bipolar wheel of condemnation and salvation, swearing off our vices each morning and forgetting by nightfall.

When I was lost in the self-abusive cycles of alcohol and drug addiction, I was blind to any direction my life could take. I spent all my time trying to extricate myself from the sins I’d committed the night before. I took refuge in blame and resentment.

The legal counsel of my rattled brain was perpetually building cases against some system or person. The biggest problem was that I thought I could do it alone. I kept my self-professed sins to myself, spinning outward appearances however they needed to look.

The phrase is “close to the vest”—but “vest” is close to the heart. And putting all that guilt, shame, and doubt into my own heart was as unhealthy as it was ineffective. Because no matter how intelligent we are, it’s our heart that communicates. Whether we understand that—or the recipient of our communication does—we still feel each other. No one needs facts to stop trusting us. If our heart is not in sync with itself, our confusion communicates. And the world responds by withholding trust. This only deepens our isolation, as we carry a broken heart in secret through a world of resentment.

At some point, in utter frustration at nothing working, I just surrendered. There was nowhere left to run. Which left me here. The way out is the way in.

We sit. And we sit. Until we begin to disengage the compulsive mind from the mind’s potential. We get lost in fantasy. We train the mind to recognize that—and return to ourselves, and this very moment. At any time, again and again, as we drift into delusion, we can return to now.

That is our refuge.

In meditation, we train the mind to recognize delusions of blame, shame, doubt, and confusion, and to turn back to trust—in our own heart, and in the present moment.

This is the example of the Buddha. No one saved him. He worked through is shit. He awakened.

With nowhere to run and no external salvation, Buddhism offers practical remedies. We turn to the Buddha—not for rescue, but as an example of a liberation we can achieve. How is this different from running to a god, a savior, a corporation, or a country to save us? Well, the Buddha will not save us. He is long gone. But the enlightened mind he accessed is available to all of us if we follow his example.

But taking refuge in his example means being willing to face ourselves, now in this moment. Not blaming ourselves for the past. We have no control over the past, so how can we be faulted for that which we have no control? Maybe there is no fault, but it is an opportunity to change the present. And no matter how difficult that present may be, it is always better to face it than to turn away.

So when we are triggered, panicked, or confused, we have the opportunity to turn to the enlightened mind within us. You may see this as your higher power, the awakened mind, which offers us the strength to face the moment, through each moment of our life.

Instead of grasping for external salvation, we can turn to the example of an awakened mind, which liberates the awakened mind within us.

The Buddha was not a god. He was a human being—who lived, died, failed, and succeeded. He had no supernatural powers. He was a teacher and student of the Dharma (the path to liberation) who worked diligently to free himself from his own suffering. Because he did the work, he understood how others suffer—and offered teachings to guide people to their own liberation.

Turning to this example is Taking Refuge in the Buddha.

“Buddha” means awake. We are taking refuge in our own wakefulness—both the part that already exists, and the part still developing.

To guide us on the path, we turn to the teachings—a map, not a doctrine. This is Taking Refuge in the Dharma.

The Buddha offered his teachings (the Dharma), and he offered the wisdom of the community around him—the teachers and students walking the path together. This is Taking Refuge in the Sangha.

The idea that we could wake up tomorrow free of guilt, resentment, and limiting patterns might seem like magic. But the Buddha offered no magic—only an ordinary path to learn how to see.