Stirring the Water

Maybe the first step towards happiness should be to stop stirring up so much trouble for yourself?

So, I'm trying to find out the truth about what is conducive to a happy life. Mind you, not "the Truth" - all polished and shined up, and placed onto a pedestal to be worshiped (with maybe a little glory reflected onto the guy who recognized it and placed it up there). I'm quite prepared to have any of the tentative truths I think I've found become overturned by new evidence. And I'm grateful to people who show me where I am wrong. As I say to students in my critical thinking class, there is nothing at all that I am 100% certain of. And I loved it when the Dalai Lama was quoted saying that if Science and Buddhism are found to disagree about something, it is Buddhism that must change. So, I want to try to see clearly for myself what are the root causes of suffering and dissatisfaction. And I mean the root causes. This life is getting shorter and shorter by the minute, and I don't want to waste any more of it on surface-level symptomatic relief. I want to pull it up from its causal roots. But to do that, one has to be able to see down to those roots.

This is one of the benefits of zazen practice - developing the ability to actually see what's in front of your nose, and to see it as it actually is, without fear, without delusion, and without force-fitting it into preconceived ideas and categories. To hold in awareness whatever is actually present, and to fully see it as it arises and as it changes or passes away. Early on the path, this might be the ability to see the difficulty of taming the "monkey mind" and disciplining it enough to stay on a simple task like following the breath or working on a koan. Later on the path, it might be the ability to see the tiny gaps in chains of thought or reactivity that previously seemed to be automatically linked and therefore beyond our control. Over time and with more experience with practice, we begin to see things that are more and more subtle, but that were actually there in front of us all along!

Now I'm suddenly going to change the metaphor (and without even using the clutch!): the effort to try to see to the root cause of suffering is sometimes described like floating on a raft or air mattress on a lake, and trying to see clearly to the bottom - through all the clouds of ideas, concepts and isms, emotions, and memories. Through zazen practice we discover the correct direction to look (down, duh) and how to focus our eyes to see whatever is there. But still, this isn't going to be enough if the water is very cloudy or silty. So, while step one to seeing the lake bottom is to learn how to look, step two is stop stirring up the mud!

Who knows what you might find down there?

The regular winds and vicissitudes of life keep whipping up waves on the surface of the lake. And if these waves are very big, they can even begin to roil the deeper waters and stir more mud up from the bottom. Some life winds can be very powerful. Traditionally, there are eight that seem especially able to cloud our vision:

• Pleasure and pain
• Praise and blame
• Gain and loss
• Fame and disrepute.

That's bad enough to struggle against. But we then further muddy the waters through our own unskillful actions. Without a regular mediation practice, it can be hard to see how the natural consequences of many of our actions either reinforce the roots of our own suffering, or at least muddy up the water so that we cannot see the roots clearly enough to eradicate them. (This topic is starting to wander dangerously close to ideas about "karma", which is a big topic best saved for another day. For now, I mean only the straight-up, cause-and-effect, inescapable consequences - and certainly not any woo-woo conceptions of cosmic scorecards and a referee who will intervene to make it all come out even).

What Stirs Up Mud?

So, here are five things to stop doing right now to stir up the mud (sounds like a clickbait headline, right?):

• Harm physically: If you  murder someone, you're probably going to PMITA prison. And even if you get away with it somehow, you'll still have to live with yourself (cue any number of 19th Century novels on how miserable that is). If you hit someone, they'll maybe hit you back. Even if you punch a Nazi in the face, the police will still arrest you. And then there's the whole vegetarianism thing. Let's not kid ourselves - each time I have a slice of that tasty, tasty bacon, some pig did get killed for it. And pigs are quite intelligent and clearly suffer a lot of distress on the way to slaughter. That's 100% on me.
• Harm verbally: Lying or other false speech obviously harms the person you lie to. But we also harm ourselves by loss of virtue, and even by just the extra effort needed to keep track of the tangled web we've woven. Not to mention the embarrassment of sometimes getting caught out. But are these harms also true for little white lies? What about exaggerations that are based in truth, but aim to mislead others? Sins of omission? Damning someone with faint praise? Truthful boasting to make ourselves look good, at the expense of others? The number and variety of subtle ways we lie can be quite astounding when you look carefully into it. George Carlin once asked, "do you ever talk to yourself, and then someone else walks in, so you have to pretend you were singing, and you really hope they believe there's a song called 'What does she think I am, a putz?'". More lying. (This time to try to preserve a false image that you are trying to foist onto the world.) Most of us seem to lie in big or small ways all the time. And there are some good techniques to try to reduce this (the 4 gates of speech - a topic for another day).
• Harm materially: If you steal something, you might get caught and punished. And even if you get away with it, you marginally contribute to the creation of a world where stealing happens. Do you really think that world won't one day turn around and steal something precious from you? How delusional. Is it okay if the thing is small (like supplies from the office cupboard)? If the thing doesn't have an obvious owner? What if it is shared ownership (you are perfectly entitled to some), but you take more than your fair share? That's the "tragedy of the commons" starting up, which will eventually bite you in the ass when the shared resource is completely gone (since everyone else decided to follow your example). More subtly, is it okay to take something that is only implicitly being offered to you? There's a candy dish on the counter at the dentist's office (an investment future business development, I guess) - is it okay to help yourself without asking? There are some practitioners who will not take anything if it is not expressly and explicitly given to them (even a glass of water set out on a table in a meeting). Is it harmful to borrow a friend's car and return it without topping up the gas tank? Cut across a neighbour's lawn to not miss the bus? The list of material harms can get into some pretty small things. Do such things really come back to cause us suffering? How so?
• Harm sexually: In a sexual relationship people can be particularly vulnerable physically and emotionally, and so it is easy to inadvertently harm them (and harm yourself). All kinds of actions will stir up the waters and impede your progress towards clear vision. Cheating, engaging in non-consensual relations of various types, or not disclosing exposure to STDs are all obvious. What about betraying the trust of intimate pillow talk? Withholding sex as a power game? The list goes on and on.
• Intoxication: Recuperating from a tough day at work with a bottle of wine or smoking a bowl, if you do it every night, is physically harming the body. Getting drunk at a party and then telling your spouse what you really think about your in-laws is going to be harmful speech (which you will learn all about the next morning). So the risk with intoxication is not so much that it clouds the vision in the immediate present (although, obviously it does do that), but moreso that it makes it much more likely that you will do one of the other four unwise things above. So how much partaking is okay? For some people, the rule is "not a single drop". Others are less strict. Is that wisdom, or just a cop-out from people with strong attachments?

Lots of other people who have walked the path before us have concluded that these things are very likely to cloud the vision, and thereby prevent anyone from spotting and eradicating the root causes of suffering and unhappiness in life. Now it's entirely up to you what you do with this information. Are you tired of the suffering in your life? Are you willing to attack the roots, or just continue papering over the symptoms? Are you willing to stop stirring?

The official "shit disturber"

Prove It!

Okay, that's a lot of unproven claims or assertions I just laid out. You may want to have some proof or supporting evidence before making some drastic changes or actions. Fair enough. But I'm not giving any. Sorry. Anything someone else gives you can just as easily be taken away from you. The only satisfactory proof will be proof that you provide yourself, through direct experience. So try some experiments. Try out the cessation of just one of the five things, even just for a week or two. See if it has any effect on your level of agitation or peace. Do you sleep any better? Does your body feel any different? Is your mind more at rest? Most importantly, does your vision during zazen get any clearer and deeper?

As always, if your own direct experience is different that what I'm spouting here, you should freely disregard me. Find out for yourself what is true. Free yourself. Don't just bind yourself to what is being spouted by me (or anyone else)!

This Ain't Zen

Right - well spotted! This is bog-standard Buddhist material (of a mostly Vipassana flavour). Some readers can safely skip this stuff. But some others might find it helpful to purify their own actions and stirrings a little (using teachings like this) before getting into serious Zen practice. Some people even believe that one should master purifications like this before embarking on any path of mediation or zazen practice. Your mileage may vary. Only you can figure out which group you are in.

For those who want the straight Zen, here is something with extensive commentary, and a clearly posed challenge question for you: