Falling into a Well, Part 1
If someone knows a simple, easily learned and applied method to reduce the power of expectations, ideas and images on our daily life I wish they would step forward now and safe us an enormous amount of suffering. One of the facts of our normal, mundane daily experience is that we do have expectations, hopes and dreams and when these are significantly rearranged or shattered, the results often feel devastating. And yet, these disappointments can be both extraordinarily painful and wonderful, if fierce, dharma gates to further awakening and freedom. The following koan presents the dilemma for those practitioners with a bit of understanding and those mature in the practice who have realized more deeply:
A clearly enlightened person falls into a well. How is this possible?
This very brief challenge raises a host of possible questions beyond the accepted traditional answer. Is awakening once and for all? If someone accomplished in the Way, including oneself, disappoints or fails us does this mean he or she is somehow not really accomplished, wise, compassionate or skillful? Do we have some idealized view of enlightenment and the freedom it purports to bring? What does it mean to be “awake?” How is it that regardless of how “awake” we might be, we can suddenly find ourselves tumbling into something unforeseen, when a moment ago we thought that we really were watching where we were going?
Hui Neng, the 6th patriarch of Zen in China, offers the following rather direct hint: “As far as Buddha Nature is concerned, there is no difference between a sinner and a sage….One enlightened thought and one is a Buddha, one foolish thought and one is again an ordinary person.” The fact is that our life is lived on a very slippery, constantly shifting slope and there is nothing, no experience of awakening no matter how deep, that will place us outside the Law of Impermanence and the inevitable pain and suffering that we experience when what we so naively refer to as “my” life inevitably and inexorably changes. The most significant of these changes are often sudden, unpredictable and can leave us frightened, confused and disoriented. Our life swings between gain and loss, whether we like it or not. We may feel that if we practice enough, gain stream entry, pass koans, master the jhanas and have deep insight that somehow we will be immune from or vaccinated against the fundamental truths of life. Here’s the real news: There is no security… NONE…and while there is freedom from suffering, there is no escape from it. No matter how continuous our mindfulness or how dedicated our practice in daily life, sooner or later because of conditioning or simply because of the unpredictability of the human condition, the ground beneath shifts or we will look away and suddenly Aiiiiieeeeeeeeee!!! Down we go! One moment we are a clearly enlightened person; the next moment we are falling uncontrollably, or simply flattened by some unforeseen something that stunningly blind-sides us. This is not some aberration or failure in you or your practice. Indeed, these moments constitute the very heart of practice, even though we may tend to beat ourselves up and feel like a failure if that particular reaction is part of our conditioning. And to add to our discomfort, others may see us as failures as they watch us take the tumble. It’s always easier to pass judgment on the tumbler when you’re not taking the tumble yourself.
There are at least two, not mutually exclusive ways that we may be led, pushed or stumble over the well’s edge. The first, as my youngest daughter is fond of saying simply is, “It happens.” It just happens. No warning, just BOOM! Some tectonic plate at the bottom of the ocean moves and suddenly there are 150,000 less people on the planet. It just happened. We become ill and then get better; or not. We survive our cancer diagnosis or our heart attack, or we don’t. We put our child on the bus for a school trip to Canada and get an early morning call about a crash and our kid’s not coming home—ever. We say or doing something unskillful and set off a series of events that we could not have imagined. People’s lives get rearranged in ways they do not ask for. Life comes along, turns us upside down and shakes us until everything in our pockets falls out. Then it drops on our head and waits to see what will happen. The fall down the well can last a long time or the ground comes up to meet us literally in a heartbeat. The result is the same; bruised, bloody and in agony at the very bottom of a very deep dark place. This is not about whether there is a loving God or not and it is not about whether Life is fair or not. This is simply how things are; how life operates, and not a single one of us is immune from these movements of Life nor separate from them. Indeed, they and we are Life itself and it is only because of how thinking constructs all of this that it seems otherwise.
The second way this falling can occur is a bit more complicated. It concerns those moments when we know or at least have some inkling that we are balanced precariously on the edge but refuse to step back. There is a small but clear voice of wisdom that says, “Better not say or do that.” And we choose not to listen. Because of the strength of the wanting, aversive or confused and ignorant mind we go against what we know to be right and true. We act counter to the call of natural wisdom and wonder as we are falling head over heels down the well, “How did this happen?!” The answer is no real mystery; we go against our natural wisdom because the voice of our conditioning is louder and more compelling in the face of the desire to gratify whatever seems to be pressing on us at the time. We practice in the way we do to increase the capacity of the spacious mind to contain virtually everything that appears within it, without the reactivity of choosing for or against. We learn to refrain from acting out of the reactivity of the confused, aversive, desiring mind and to adhere more and more closely to the natural wisdom inherent in simple knowing. And we inevitably find that more practice is required. We are never finished, fully accomplished, completely enlightened beings and there is always some new, never-before-met challenge to test and deepen our understanding of ourselves. This testing happens both through “success” and “failure.”
Are these moments of failure to listen to our own true wisdom mistakes that can be avoided with enough practice, whatever that may mean? I don’t think so. Remember, this practice makes us neither bullet-proof nor immortal. You cut me, I bleed and vice versa. And it hurts. We can become increasingly skilled, loving, wise and kind. But to think that we will not at some point fall or be knocked into the well is a hubris that is at once laughable and dangerous. It is often part of what sets us up for the fall.
One of my favorite poems by the 15th century zen master Ikkyu goes as follows:
Wife, daughters, friends.
This is for you.
Enlightenment is
Mistake after mistake.
Each moment of failure, each moment of falling over the edge, each loss, each gain, each disappointment, each joy, each moment of darkness or light…..we are so often just a little bit off the way and in that moment of seeing, really seeing just this much, our feet are once again on the Path. Even if we are a bit wobbly. One of the great gifts of the practice life is to realize ever more deeply that Life makes no “mistakes”. And as soon as we see this, the wound begins to heal and what was thought to be a “mistake” or “failure” can become the beginning of wisdom, compassion, understanding and a more expansive life, even when what occasions this can be so very painful or deeply sad. It is what Soen Roshi referred to as transforming our “miserable karma into our wonderful dharma.”
So, the clearly enlightened person has fallen into the well. His/her falls comes to an abrupt stop at the bottom where they lie broken and bleeding. We can see how this happens, but what now? Stay tuned for part 2.