“There’s something not right here. I feel cold, death.”
“That place…is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go.”
—LUKE SKYWALKER AND MASTER YODA IN THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
The dark side of the Force manifests as anger, fear, aggression, and hatred. Master Yoda says in The Phantom Menace, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” We all have the dark side within us. We can’t run from it. Coming to terms with the dark side within is critical, not just for Jedi but for everyone. Fear is the first element Yoda mentions in the series of emotions that lead to the suffering of the dark side.
In The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon faces fear in the intimidating form of Darth Maul. The Jedi battles the Sith in Theed, near the melting pit where laser force fields switch on and close like a wall between them. Instead of allowing his fear to overwhelm him, when the barriers go up between himself and Maul, Qui-Gon calmly kneels, centers himself, lets go of worry about what will happen next, and boldly faces the terror before him.
Buddhist practice is about accepting reality regardless of what it is. For many of us this means confronting frightening thoughts and mental activities that plague us. It’s natural to want to flee from such things or to desperately try to destroy them, as Maul desperately wanted to destroy Qui-Gon. We fear being alone with our thoughts, and we fear making mistakes in front of others, failing at our jobs, and being publicly humiliated. We try to confront our fears by doing the things that frighten us. Little by little, we become acclimated to the things that terrify us and the fear seems to dissolve. But does it ever completely go away? Can we permanently defeat fear?
Darth Maul once said, “Fear is my ally.” Fear is something the Sith use to weaken people, corrupt them, and bend them to their will. It’s a very effective instrument. Who hasn’t been rendered utterly docile by fear? When in the grips of extreme fear, don’t you grasp wildly for someone or something to relieve you from your horrifying state?
But Qui-Gon wasn’t subdued by the fearful power of Maul. He didn’t even draw back and wait for Obi-Wan to help him once the laser doors swung briefly open. Qui-Gon wasn’t afraid to face Maul alone because he had already seen the roots of fear in his own mind. He did not try to repress his fear, send it away, or ignore it like the inauthentic bully swaggering in front of him. Qui-Gon accepted his fear and didn’t allow it to overwhelm him. Qui-Gon saw his fear for what it truly was, and that insight rendered his fear harmless.
The purpose of Buddhism is not to destroy fear—or the dark side. The things that terrify us aren’t problems that we need to overcome. Fear itself is born out of misunderstanding the true nature of reality. It might have been more accurate for Yoda to say “Misunderstanding leads to fear, fear leads to anger,” and so on. The roots of suffering will be covered later in this book, but for now it’s enough to say that fear, and suffering in general, is unpleasant, but blasting it with turbo lasers or hiding under Imperial stairwells is not the solution.
We need to learn from Qui-Gon’s example. Buddhist practice isn’t a self-help regimen to take us from an undesired state to a desired one. Practice is about facing yourself right here, right now, and opening your eyes to the truth of who you are. That’s what Qui-Gon did. Then, when it was time to re-engage Maul, fear couldn’t push him back or cripple his ability to slap sabers with the zealous Zabrak. (Fat lot of good it did him—no son of Dathomir goes down that easily!)
Sometimes the dark side within can overwhelm us. We only need to look at Anakin and his slaughter of the Tusken Raiders in Attack of the Clones to see how entangled the dark side and suffering are. Anakin was overcome with grief when his mother died—an understandable and appropriate reaction. But his grief becomes hatred for her murderers and drives Anakin to slay them all, “not just the men, but the women and the children too.”
We might imagine that acting out our anger will free us from it, but in Anakin’s case his rage was not quelled by his action but intensified by it. Anakin failed to mindfully care for his sorrow and instead he allowed himself to be consumed by it. This begot the dark side, magnifying the suffering within him. Later, we see his suffering continues to grow when, at the Lars homestead, he confesses his actions to Padmé. Anakin is overwhelmed with misery. He explodes, throws a tool, and screams wild accusations before finally breaking down and weeping.
We cannot dispel suffering by acting on our anger or throwing a tantrum. In fact, the very effort to expel suffering is itself just another kind of suffering. We can lessen the intensity of our suffering by facing it with clear mindfulness so it does not overwhelm us as it does Anakin.
No matter what you’re feeling right now—angry or calm, happy, sad, or indifferent, like a Sith or like a Jedi—it’s just the way it is. And this particular moment couldn’t be any other way. This is exactly how life is at this moment. Wanting, hoping, and wishing in vain for the present moment to be different than it is right now is what Buddhists call suffering.
The Buddha said, “I teach only suffering and the cessation of suffering.” He was not interested in abstract philosophical theorizing that did nothing to change our lived experience. He refused to answer metaphysical questions or to entertain idle speculation. He directed people back to themselves and to the problem of suffering.
Suffering is a fact of life. It boils down to dissatisfaction with the way our lives are right now, driven by the constant search for what we think will make us happy only to discover after we get it that it wasn’t the droid we were looking for. And then we’re compelled to “move along” to the next thing…and the next—spinning in circles like hapless Stormtroopers, endlessly searching but never finding what we seek.
The previously presented practices of mindfulness and concentration help us to recognize the pattern of futile searching and to see through the suffering it creates. Living fully in the present moment as Qui-Gon recommends, we can observe the causes and conditions that give rise to longing and dissatisfaction. When we look closely, we begin to realize that our own previously unexamined views, beliefs, attitudes, and habits are what cause us to suffer. Mindfulness allows us to see how we Jedi Mind Trick ourselves into suffering.
In Attack of the Clones Anakin is struggling to accept the way things are. He is angry over his mother’s murder and angry at himself for massacring the Sand People. He can’t accept his own feelings even when Padmé reminds him that his feelings are natural.
“I’m a Jedi,” he growls. “I know I’m better than this.”
Anakin’s anger in that scene is perfectly understandable. But Anakin believes he shouldn’t feel anger. His idea of being a Jedi is that he should always be calm, serene, and detached from mundane human emotions.
“To be angry is to be human,” Padmé says.
Anakin’s idealized image of the Jedi puts him at odds with his own humanity.
The goal of Buddhist practice is not to rise above our human nature. Buddhas are not serene saints that glide atop clouds and peer pityingly down at us fools as we struggle with our out-of-control emotions. Buddhas are people who deeply understand the truth about ourselves and the world we live in, and attain great peace from this knowledge. Taking up Buddhist practice is about seeing ourselves and the world for what they are in this moment, and accepting them. Life can’t be any different than it is in this moment. We accept or we struggle.
Acceptance doesn’t mean that we should be complacent and vapidly watch as Sith Lords massacre their way to power. There is nothing complacent about Buddhist practice. Instead, acceptance means taking genuine stock of the facts of our situation: we don’t waste time wishing things were different or telling ourselves they should be. Before we can improve a situation, we must first accept it for what it is.
Anakin’s anger is painful to him. He doesn’t like it. But this pain is not necessarily suffering. From the Buddhist point of view, suffering is not the pain one feels from an emotion, injury, or loss; real suffering is the belief that we shouldn’t feel what we feel. Suffering happens when we can’t accept reality—when we say that our human feelings are beneath us.
Anakin turned to the dark side because he feared losing Padmé. Fear of losing a loved one is understandable. But Anakin could not recognize or accept his fear. When we cannot clearly see or accept what is, we cannot work to change it. Anakin shoved his fear aside and blindly pursued a power beyond human (and Jedi) nature. Although his quest for power was born from compassion, it was consumed by fear, and that fear eventually overpowered him. Anakin fell to the dark side and a life of bitter suffering.
We need to accept suffering and befriend it. We must be willing to suffer, to be bored, sad, or afraid. Buddhist practice is an opportunity to bear witness to these unpleasant feelings, not to suppress them. By bearing witness we recognize each moment for what it is. This is how things are at this moment and that’s not a problem. When we learn to engage each moment with acceptance, with each moment we are a bit more free. Then we gain freedom from our suffering.
To recognize that suffering is an undeniable fact of life doesn’t mean that we agree with C-3PO’s grouse that “We seem to be made to suffer. It’s our lot in life.” It is not our lot in life, because there is a way to establish a new relationship with suffering, one in which suffering doesn’t seem so unbearable.
Suffering comes in many different forms, but there are a few basic types we can learn to recognize. A major class of suffering revolves around change. Life is perpetually changing. Because of this we constantly find ourselves encountering things that we like and things that we don’t like. We hate getting older because youth is fun and death is scary. We’re excited when we buy the Episode I COMMTECH Reader, but we get annoyed when the blasted thing doesn’t work. Even when something good happens it later passes away. This is the impermanent nature of life.
After Luke Skywalker destroys the first Death Star in A New Hope, the rebels in their hidden fortress are elated. Not much later, however, the joy turned to fear as the Empire struck back and the small band of freedom fighters had to scurry into frozen hidey-holes on Hoth. Being stuck with something you hate, like a hollowed-out ice cube for a secret base, is an example of suffering.
Another form of suffering revolves around frustration. When we are forced to be in a situation we don’t like or if we can’t do what we like, we get frustrated. In Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker feels smothered by his exacting master. He accuses Obi-Wan of hindering his progress as a Jedi and even implies that the older Jedi is to blame for his mother’s death. Anakin is frustrated because he’s not able to do what he wants to do and he cannot entirely control events in his life. That’s what he felt the dark side had to offer: the power of personal control.
We also create suffering by playing the “should game”: we tell ourselves we or the world should be different. We think we should not be the way we are or the world should not be as it is. We tell ourselves we should be better people and should not be such screw-ups. “I should be kinder, calmer, and more generous.” This is the way I typically play the should game. Despite good intentions, when we start playing the should game we make our lives into a struggle. We struggle against ourselves. We judge and criticize ourselves.
Suffering is not always catastrophic or life changing; it can also be quite subtle. It can be nothing more than a pervasive feeling of restlessness, dissatisfaction, anxiety, and angst. The meandering search through life that leads us from place to place, job to job, partner to partner, hoping to find the missing element that will make everything as it should be is a type of suffering too. Dissatisfaction with the here and the now—the feeling that our happiness will occur sometime in the future, perhaps when we have completed school, gotten married, or raised our children—is a subtle form of suffering.
But malaise, the should game, pride, and self-criticism are not things we try to banish from our psyches. They aren’t evil agents of the dark side that we must set out to destroy. They are merely aspects of ourselves that we must become mindful of, as Qui-Gon instructed Obi-Wan. The Jedi practice of mindfulness and concentration shares much in common with the ancient Greek maxim “Know thyself.” When we know ourselves we understand the source of our dissatisfaction, and knowing this eases a great amount of our frustration and self-hatred.
To understand and free ourselves from suffering we must first recognize it. Following Qui-Gon’s advice and being mindful in our daily life allows us to be aware of the presence of suffering as it manifests. So often we want uncomfortable experiences to be over so we can get to the next moment, one we imagine will be better. The practice is to recognize that we want things to be different. That’s okay. We must first acknowledge our present experience and our feelings about it.
For instance, we may notice that frustration arises in us as we wait in an interminable line to get into the next Star Wars movie. (Considering modern conveniences like online ticket reservations and select seating, maybe I’m dating myself, but being a Star Wars fan is about waiting in line, dammit!) When we are unconsciously frustrated, that feeling sweeps us deep into suffering. Our jaw clenches and muscles tighten. We begin to find the people around us annoying. The kid playing in the queue grates on our nerves. We create a lot of suffering in the line because we just want the waiting to be over and the lightsaber dueling and starship battling to begin.
Recognizing our state of mind—in this case frustration—can stem the tide of suffering. Not recognizing our state of mind is like running around with a blast shield over our eyes—we are bound to get hurt and hurt others. When we recognize that we are frustrated and that our frustration is coloring our experience, it is like lifting the blast shield that has been blinding us from our eyes. Once we are able to clearly see what is happening, we are better prepared to act and respond to action appropriately.
Even if we recognize our state of frustration, we may try to bury our “feelings deep down.” We don’t like negative feelings like frustration any more than we like waiting in line. But repression just deepens our discontent. It would be wiser to approach our difficult mental states with an attitude of acceptance. It’s okay that we become frustrated. Frustration, anger, hatred, and sadness are all part of life. We cannot avoid or dispel them. It isn’t merely the presence of mental states like this that causes suffering; our aversion to them does. Trying to suppress, run from, or ignore frustration is simply a waste of time (and potentially a cause of more intense misery). If we accept the presence of frustration we gain insight that can free us from habits and perspectives that breed dissatisfaction.
We begin by looking deeply into our minds. Looking deeply means to investigate our frustration. We look to see the causes and conditions that have given rise to it. We don’t think about why we are frustrated or psychoanalyze ourselves; we simply become quiet and sit with our current state of mind. Like Qui-Gon says, “Feel, don’t think.” This is what Anakin fails to do after the death of his mother. His attachment to the way he wanted things to be and his failure to prevent them from being otherwise overwhelms him—and he ends up massacring the Tusken Raiders.
Unlike Anakin, we can save ourselves from regrettable actions by looking deeply. When we were waiting in line, way back when, to see The Phantom Menace, we had plenty of opportunity to examine frustration—sometimes days…and bitter nights…exposed to the elements on the unforgiving pavement outside the theater where passersby heckle and Trekkies dressed like Spock tell us line-waiting is illogical. It’s not always pleasant, I can attest. But at such times we can take notice of the current of beliefs that flows just below our frustration. We move past the shoulds and shouldn’ts, the repression and rationalization, and come to a quiet place where we see the root of our frustration. Seeing the root of suffering produces insight.
Insight into the source of suffering allows us to establish a better relationship with it. We cannot force insight to happen. Mindfulness, recognition, acceptance, and looking deeply provide the conditions that allow insight to happen naturally. When we see suffering for what it is, we understand how we ourselves create it. More often than not it is our perspective—the views we hold about how we should live—that creates suffering. Perhaps we think we should be living “big experiences”—climbing mountains, swimming with Nautolans and Mon Cals, or becoming “enlightened.” Waiting in line, we believe, is tedium, and we’re pissed we have to wait when life (or Lucasfilm or Disney) requires us to wait. Reality just isn’t lining up (pun!) with our dreams of how life should be. Our limited perspective, our beliefs and expectations, prevent us from seeing how perfect everything is at this very moment.
Recognizing, accepting, and looking deeply into suffering is not always easy. Sometimes suffering can be much more elusive and darker than feeling frustrated in line. Other times suffering can be too painful to look at. For many of us there are aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to know and that we would prefer did not exist.
Anakin suffers in Attack of the Clones when he cannot accept his failure and blames himself for not saving his mother. When we are confronted by our own failures and weaknesses we usually do our best to avoid them. We find ways to distract ourselves by turning on the television, broaching idle conversation, or drifting into fantasy. Such diversions help us to forget our worries, but they can’t bring us the type of freedom from suffering necessary to be true happiness. We only find such freedom when we are willing to accept our suffering and take the time to carefully examine it.
When the Buddha looked deeply into his suffering he discovered that it had no external cause but was the product of his own misunderstanding and attachments. We typically see other people, organizations, or events as the sources of our suffering. We think “if only” the world would conform to our ideals we would be happy. So we try to remake our friends and our family, or do away with the things we don’t like. But this course of action can never be successful.
In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke believes Darth Vader is the source of much of the galaxy’s problems. He thinks if only he can get rid of Vader the galaxy will be relieved of a great deal of suffering—that’s why he didn’t hesitate to attack the Dark Lord in the cave on Dagobah.
Let’s recall that scene.
Luke has just finished a training exercise with Master Yoda when he turns a wary eye on a dark cave beneath a huge, black tree. “There’s something not right here. I feel cold, death,” he says in a halting voice.
“That place,” replies Yoda, referring to the cave, “is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go.”
Yoda directs Luke into the cave to face the dark side residing there. The dark side is all the suffering in life: it is frustration, hatred, anger, and all the negative feelings and thoughts that come from within us. By going into the cave Luke is penetrating his own nature on a quest to recognize himself and the source of his difficulties. Yoda knows that if Luke can confront what lies within with courage and compassion, he will do much to overcome whatever hold the dark side has on him. But Luke makes the same error many of us make in our lives: he mistakenly believes his suffering comes from somewhere outside of himself. In this case, Darth Vader is the apparent source.
Out of the misty gloom of the cave’s interior Darth Vader seems to appear. Luke ignites his lightsaber, and after a brief exchange of blows he defeats the Dark Lord of the Sith, separating his masked head from his body. Despite this apparent victory Yoda later calls Luke’s experience in the cave a failure.
Luke fails because he was unable to recognize that the supposed source of his problems—the Darth Vader he faced in the cave—was in fact himself. When Vader’s mask explodes it does not reveal the monster Luke had expected. Instead Luke’s own face lies in its interior darkness. He hasn’t killed Darth Vader; he’s destroyed himself.
In The Clone Wars, Yoda has his own experience in the cave on Dagobah. Like Luke, he also confronts his personal dark side in the form of a vile little imp not too different from Tolkien’s Gollum (with pointy green ears, of course). Also like Luke, Yoda chooses to battle his doppelganger, but he quickly learns he cannot defeat it with force of strength or will. Instead, Yoda chooses to embrace his dark side–nature. Embrace here does not mean “use”; it means to hold close as one would hold a wounded friend. By accepting his dark side, Yoda heals and transforms it.
Luke’s experience shows us that imagining suffering to be something “out there” sets us up for failure and greater suffering. Suffering comes from within us. This was also the Buddha’s crucial insight. To discover this for ourselves, we need to find time in our daily life to be quiet so we can recognize the beliefs and ideas that form the perspective that tilts us toward the dark side. Recognizing, accepting, and looking deeply into our own minds and seeing that suffering is a product of our perspective produces the insight that transforms bondage and suffering into freedom and joy. This practice of meditation to lift the shroud of the dark side is the training that we see the Jedi engaged in throughout the Star Wars series.