WHEN OUR THOUGHTS BECOME OUR WORST ENEMIES
When we are unhappy, we can’t help thinking that certain images are armed with claws and stingers to torture us with.
ALAIN
Stricken by the death of a loved one, distraught over a breakup, laid low by failure, heartbroken by the suffering of others, or consumed by negative thoughts, we sometimes get the feeling that life as a whole is spinning apart. There seems to be no safe way out at all. Sadness settles like a pall over the mind. “Just one person has left us, and the world is emptied of people,” lamented Lamartine. Unable to imagine an end to our pain, we withdraw into ourselves and dread every coming moment. “When I tried to think clearly about this, I felt that my mind was immured, that it couldn’t expand in any direction. I knew that the sun was rising and setting, but little of its light reached me,” writes Andrew Solomon.1 As harrowing as the situation may be—the death of a close friend, for instance—there are countless ways to experience the ordeal. Happiness is bound up with distress when we lack adequate inner resources to sustain certain basic elements of sukha: the joy of being alive, the conviction that we still have the ability to flourish, an understanding of the ephemeral nature of all things.
Great external upheavals aren’t necessarily what distress us most. It has been observed that depression and suicide rates decline considerably in times of war. Natural disasters, too, sometimes bring out the best in humankind in terms of courage, solidarity, and the will to live. Altruism and mutual assistance contribute greatly to reducing the post-traumatic stress associated with tragedies. Most of the time it is not outward events but our own mind and negative emotions that make us unable to maintain our inner stability and drag us down.
The conflictive emotions tie knots in our chest that obstinately refuse to be unraveled. In vain we try to fight them or reduce them to silence. We’ve only just gotten out from under them, we imagine, when they erupt again with renewed vigor. Such emotional distress is notably resistant to soothing, and every attempt to be rid of it seems doomed to failure. During such conflicts, our world shatters into a multitude of contradictions that generate adversity, oppression, and anguish. What went wrong?
Thoughts can be our best friends and our worst enemies. When they make us feel that the entire world is against us, every perception, every encounter, and the world’s very existence become sources of torment. It is our thoughts themselves that rise up as enemies. They stampede through our mind in droves, each one creating its own little drama of ever-increasing confusion. Nothing is right outside because nothing is right inside.
When we get a close look at the tenor of our everyday thoughts, we realize the extent to which they color the inner film that we project onto the world. The worrier fears the least event—if he needs to take a plane, he thinks it will crash; if he has to drive, he’ll have an accident; if he’s seeing the doctor, he’s sure he has cancer. For a jealous man, his lover’s most innocuous travels are suspect, the smile directed elsewhere is a source of pain, and the least absence sends a host of senseless doubts raging through his mind. For these two subjects, as for the hot-tempered, the miserly, the obsessive, thoughts swell into daily tempests that cast a shadow over life by destroying their own joie de vivre and that of the people around them.
Yet this knot in our chest was tied not by our unfaithful husband, our object of desire, our dishonest colleague, or our unjust accuser, but by our own mind. It is the result of mental constructs that, as they accumulate and solidify, give the illusion of being external and real. What provides the raw material for that knot and allows it to form within us is an exacerbated sense of self-importance. Anything that does not respond to the self’s demands becomes a disturbance, a threat, or an insult. The past is painful, we are unable to enjoy the present, and we tremble before the projection of our future anguish. According to Andrew Solomon, “In depression, all that is happening in the present is the anticipation of pain in the future, and the present qua present no longer exists at all.”2 The inability to manage our thoughts proves to be the principal cause of suffering. Learning to tone down the ceaseless racket of disturbing thoughts is a decisive stage on the road to inner peace. As Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche explains:
These trains of thought and states of mind are constantly changing, like the shapes of clouds in the wind, but we attach great importance to them. An old man watching children at play knows very well that their games are of little consequence. He feels neither elated nor upset at what happens in their game, while the children take it all very seriously. We are just exactly them.3
We must acknowledge that so long as we have not actualized sukha, our well-being is at the mercy of the storm. We can respond to heartbreaks by trying to forget them, distracting ourselves, moving away, going on a trip, and so on, but these are merely plaster casts on a wooden leg. As Nicolas Boileau put it:
In vain he flees his troubles on a horse —
They share the saddle and see him on his course.4
FIRST THINGS FIRST
How do we go about making peace with our own emotions? First, we have to focus our mind on the raw power of inner suffering. Instead of avoiding it or burying it away in some dark corner of our mind, we should make it the object of our meditation, without ruminating over the events that caused the pain or reviewing every freeze-frame from the movie of our life. Why is it unnecessary at this stage to dwell on the distant causes of our suffering? The Buddha offered the following image. Will a man who has just been struck in the chest by an arrow ask himself, “What wood is the arrow made of? What kind of bird do the feathers come from? What craftsman made it? Was he a good man or a scoundrel?” He certainly won’t. His first concern will be to tear the arrow from his chest.
When a painful emotion strikes us, the most urgent thing is to look at it head-on and to identify the immediate thoughts that triggered and are fanning it. Then by fixing our inner gaze on the emotion itself, we can gradually dissolve it like snow in sunshine. Furthermore, once the strength of the emotion has been sapped, the causes that triggered it will seem less tragic and we will have won ourselves the chance to break free from the vicious circle of negative thoughts.
CONTEMPLATING THE NATURE OF THE MIND
How can we prevent the perpetual reemergence of disturbing thoughts? If we resign ourselves to being the perpetual victims of our thoughts, we are like dogs who run after every stick thrown for them. Closely identifying with every thought, we follow it and reinforce it with boundless emotional entanglements.
So we need to take a closer look at mind itself. The first things we notice are the currents of thought that are continuously flowing without our even being aware of them. Like it or not, countless thoughts born of our sensations, our memories, and our imagination are forever streaming through our mind. But there is also a quality of mind that is always present no matter what kind of thoughts we entertain. That quality is the primary consciousness underlying all thought. It is what remains in the rare moment when the mind is at rest, almost motionless, even as it retains its ability to know. That faculty, that simple open presence, is what we may call pure consciousness, because it exists even in the absence of mental constructs.
In pursuing the mind’s observation of itself even further, we will find ourselves experiencing this pure consciousness and the thoughts that emerge from it. It does exist. But what else can we say besides that? Do these thoughts have any inherent characteristics? Do they have a particular localization? No. A color? A shape? Neither. All we find is the quality of knowing, but no intrinsic features of their own. In pure consciousness we experience the mind as empty of inherent existence. This notion of emptiness of thought is undoubtedly very foreign to Western psychology. What purpose does it serve? First of all, when a powerful emotion or thought arises—anger, for instance—what normally occurs? We are very easily overwhelmed by this thought, which multiplies into numerous new thoughts that disturb and blind us, and prompt us to utter words and commit acts, sometimes violent ones, that can make others suffer and soon become a source of regret. Instead of unleashing that avalanche, we can examine the angry thought itself and come to see that it has been nothing but smoke and mirrors from the start.
Thoughts emerge from pure consciousness and are then reabsorbed in it, just as waves emerge from the ocean and dissolve into it again. Once we understand this, we have taken a great leap toward inner peace. From that moment, our thoughts have lost much of their power to disturb us. To familiarize yourself with this method, when a thought arises, try to see where it came from; when it disappears, ask yourself where it went. In that brief moment when your mind is not encumbered by discursive thoughts, contemplate its nature. In that instant when past thoughts have fallen silent and future ones have yet to emerge, you can perceive a pure and luminous consciousness unadulterated by your conceptual constructs. Proceeding by direct experience, you will gradually come to understand what Buddhism means by the nature of mind.
It is not easy to experience pure consciousness, but it is possible. My dearly missed friend Francisco Varela, a leading researcher in the cognitive sciences and practitioner of Buddhist meditation, confided in me, when we spoke at length a few weeks before his death of cancer, that he had lately managed to spend practically all his time in that pure awareness. The physical pain seemed very distant to him and was no hindrance to his inner peace. Moreover he needed only the weakest doses of painkillers. His wife, Amy, told me later that he maintained that contemplative serenity until his very last breath.
EXERCISE
Resting in awareness
Look at what is behind the curtain of discursive thoughts. Try to find a waking presence there, free of mental fabrications, transparent, luminous, untroubled by thoughts of the past, the present, or the future. Try to rest in the present moment, free of concepts. Watch the nature of the gap between thoughts, which is free from mental constructs. Gradually extend the interval between the disappearance of one thought and the emergence of the next.
Remain in a state of simplicity that is free of mental constructs, yet perfectly aware; beyond effort, yet alert and mindful.
As you thus observe the wellspring of thoughts, it is possible to break their endless proliferation.
HAVING MORE THAN ONE STRING TO YOUR BOW
As the pain that afflicts us grows stronger, our mental universe contracts. Events and thoughts continually rebound off the walls of our circumscribed inner prison. They speed up and gather force, every ricochet inflicting new wounds. We must therefore broaden our inner horizons to the point where there are no walls for negative emotion to bounce off of. When these walls, built brick by brick by the self, come tumbling down, suffering’s bullets will miss their mark and vanish in the vast openness of inner freedom. We realize that our suffering was simply forgetfulness of our true nature, which remains unchanged beneath the fog of emotions. It is essential to develop and sustain this broadening of the inner horizons. External events and thoughts will then emerge like stars that reflect off the calm surface of a vast ocean without disturbing it.
One of the best ways to achieve that state is to meditate on feelings that transcend our mental afflictions. If, for instance, we gradually let our mind be invaded by a feeling of love and compassion for all beings, the warmth of such a thought will very likely melt the ice of our frustrations, while its gentleness will cool the fire of our desires. We will have succeeded in raising ourselves above our personal pain to the point where it becomes almost imperceptible.
EXERCISE
When you feel overwhelmed by emotions
Imagine a stormy sea with breakers as big as houses. Each wave is more monstrous than the last. They are about to engulf your boat, your very life hangs on those few extra yards in the rushing wall of water. Then imagine observing the same scene from a high-flying plane. From that perspective, the waves seem to form a delicate blue-and-white mosaic, barely trembling on the surface of the water. From that height in the silence of space, your eye sees these almost motionless patterns, and your mind immerses itself in clear and luminous sky.
The waves of anger or obsession seem real enough, but remind yourself that they are merely fabrications of your mind; that they will rise and also again disappear. Why stay on the boat of mental anxiety? Make your mind as vast as the sky and you will find that the waves of afflictive emotions have lost all the strength you had attributed to them.
WHY BLAME THE ENTIRE WORLD?
It is tempting to systematically pass the blame on to the world and other people. When we feel anxious, depressed, cranky, envious, or emotionally exhausted, we’re quick to pass the buck to the outside world; tensions with colleagues at work, arguments with our spouse—anything, even the color of the sky, can be a source of upset. This reflex is far more than a mere psychological evasion. It reflects the mistaken perception that causes us to attribute inherent qualities to external objects when in fact those qualities are dependent on our own minds. Systematically blaming others and holding them responsible for our suffering is the surest way to lead an unhappy life. It is by transforming our minds that we can transform our world.
We should not underestimate the consequences of our acts, words, and thoughts. If we sow the seeds of poisonous plants along with those of flowers, we should not be surprised when the harvest is mixed. If we alternate between selfless and harmful behaviors, we ought to expect to get a sharply contrasting blend of joys and sufferings.
It is easier to work with the disturbing effects of a strong emotion when we are in the midst of experiencing it, rather than when it lies dormant in the shadow of our unconscious. At the precise moment of the experience, we will have an invaluable opportunity to investigate the process of mental suffering.
To cite a personal example, I am not by nature an angry person, but over the course of the past twenty years, the times that I have lost my temper have taught me more about the nature of that destructive emotion than years of tranquillity. As the saying goes, “A single dog barking makes more noise than a hundred silent dogs.” In the 1980s, I had just acquired my first laptop computer, which I used to translate Tibetan texts. One morning as I was working, sitting on the wooden floor in a monastery at the far end of Bhutan, a friend thought it would make a cute joke to spill a handful of tsampa (roast barley flour) on my keyboard as he passed by. I saw red and shot him a filthy look, saying, “Was that supposed to be funny?” Seeing that I was truly angry, he stopped and tersely replied, “One moment of anger can destroy years of patience.” His gesture hadn’t been especially clever, but he was essentially right.
Another time, in Nepal, a person who had swindled the monastery of a large sum of money came by to lecture me on morality. Again my blood boiled. My voice trembling with anger, I told her to get lost, and helped her out the door with a nudge. At the time, I was convinced that my anger was perfectly justified. It was only hours later that I came to see how destructive an emotion anger really is, reducing our clarity and inner peace and turning us into veritable puppets.
More constructive responses to these events would have been, in the first case, to simply explain to my friend how useful the laptop was for my work and how fragile it was, and in the second case, to firmly remind the person of the sheer facts, try to understand what was going on in her disturbed mind, and if possible gently help her out of her confusion.
CULTIVATING SERENITY
In Tibet in the 1820s, a bandit much feared for his cruelty once came to the cave of the hermit Jigme Gyalwai Nyugu, intending to steal his meager provisions. Entering the cave, he found himself in the presence of a serene old man meditating with his eyes closed, his hair a mane of white, his face radiating peace, love, and compassion. At the very moment when the thief saw the sage, his aggression vanished and he stood several minutes watching him with wonder. Then he withdrew after asking the sage for his blessing. From then on, whenever the thief saw the opportunity to do wrong to anyone, the serene face of the white-haired old man came to his mind and he abandoned his evil plan. Visualizing such scenes is not about having fun with autosuggestion, but about being in resonance with the basic goodness lying at our very core.
THE POWER OF EXPERIENCE
When we emerge from that moment of blindness during which we are completely in the grip of a strong emotion, and our mind has been freed from its disruptive emotional burden, it is hard to believe that an emotion had dominated us to such an extent. There’s an important lesson to be learned here: never underestimate the power of the mind, which is capable of reifying vast worlds of hatred, desire, elation, and sadness. The problems we experience contain a precious potential for transformation, a fountainhead of energy from which we can tirelessly draw the living force that makes us able to build where indifference or apathy prevent it. And every difficulty can become the wicker which we weave into an inner basket that can accommodate all the trials of life.