| Meditation journal
"We spend our wholelife seeking ever more pleasure, little do we know it is our wanting that is causing all the pain." Reborn in the samsara is the result and continuation of the frustrated wanting to establish a perfect, solid sense of self. Only there is no such thing as a permanent self, and therefore the wanting is never satisfied, causing incessant dukka repeating in each lifetime. The circle of Samsara or the being born and dying can be viewed in terms of the rise and fall of an emotion, minutes comes, minutes go,or yesterday, present and tomorrow. I personally prefer this perspective, which means adherence to a rigid view of karma across lifetimes is rather parochial. All the pleasure-seeking, need for validation, pursuit of success are ways to reaffirm the sense of self or distraction from the frustrated wanting. Therefore, once we can see that all things, including the self are impermanent, it becomes clear that wanting are intrinsically unsatisfying. There does not exist a core self, that we can identity with, as opposed to others – the traditional understanding of a soul of the western philosophical concept of an unchanging self among the changing others. Such a view confines our living in a constant endeavour to sustain the 'self', while developing habit that take us further andfurther away from the reality. In fact, self is a dynamic process, that comes to being as experience in our streams of consciousness through the intertwining actions between beings in the world. Inter-being and interconnectedness thus found the ground of our being. In other word, self as a permanent feature of our existence is ultimately an illusion just like everything else in the realm of samsara, which must be discarded if reality is to be perceived as it is. The seeking and wanting of more pleasure then is the paradox of life that does not only defeat its original purpose, but also stand in the way of our awareness of our connectedness with the rest of all the beings in the universe, and our ultimate realization of our nature. Therefore, letting go of our desire and craving as the path to enlightment does not mean adopting a nihilistic and passive pessimistic way of life. Rather, it is a path that help forgo our own desire and integrate the benefit of the greater desire of the whole, a goal that is the cessation of suffering, where action are no longer motivated by wanting, but by a genuine compassion or metta for our own and others’ well-being. Hence, the practice of metta bhavana which generate emotional positivity is essential in providing a condition where insight into the reality can arise, and good sustainable life can happen. Tonight I asked myself what has been the motivation of my actions, or the way I have been seeking my happiness. For years since my teenage, I found I have been spending a major part of my life thinking about women. Partly for the physical pleasure and the social status successfully getting women would ensue, but mostly because of the validation it would provide for my self esteem. Therefore, wanting sexual relationships become the power house where I generate energy for the illusive self, which I thought must bloom in order to achieve a good life. Because of my meditative practice, I was able to see last night that each time I look at a woman with desire, I was not only enjoying the beauty, or gathering images for my sexual fantasies, I wasn’t even just looking for the sensation of love, as I gathered before. I was actually strongly but covertly hoping her to return my looking to gratify my desire to be an attractive self, a worthy self. All the time when I thought I was receiving, I was asking.
Isn’t it the same for all wanting? As soon as we receive what we wanted, we want more. This is the nature of our illusive self. It motivates us to act out of the fear of losing it,even when the action itself might seem good (some people needs to please other to feel good themselves). In order to live a wholesome life, we must find our true nature as interbeing, whose intention for goodness relate us to each other. Therefore self-compassion is the basis of our compassion for others. Here I was alluded to the golden rule, "You shall love your neighbour as you love youself.". Action that are motivated by metta are intrinsically ethical, internally good. When I was afraid to directly compliment a good-looking stranger on the tube, I was actually being tormented by the opposing forces of the fear of my motive (to gain validation in her response – flattered, enticed, sexual) being frustrated and my rationalization of the frustration by the self-blame of incompetence; and my genuine aesthetic appreciation of a beauty. Therefore when I finally plucked up the courage to sit beside a young woman and compliment on her good look without tact or pre-thinking, although she took it more by surprise and responded in a awkward politeness by saying thank you and nothing more, I was not even slightly hurt but felt overjoyed with a sense of liberation as I reminded myself ‘ I do not ask for anything with this action”. As this “I do not ask for…” became my motto, life began to open up a new space which allowed much more courage, and endurance and tolerance to life’s adversity and inevitable suffering. This allows us to be patient with, or even cherish dukka (suffering), and receive the teaching it intends to give. |
