Fear, aversion, work and a path with heart

I often feel overworked, overcommitted, and overwhelmed in situations of my own making verging on being out of control, in imminent danger of bringing myself and the organization I helped start come crashing down in flames.

Yes somewhat dramatic but I often lie awake or am awakened at night by feelings of panic. What if we don’t find the funding we need for next year? Or to buy land we need? What if we can’t find the staff we need to run the program? What is happening to the youth we are trying to help? How are we going to get the reporting due to so many different donors with different formats done? How are we going to make the new programs work? What if things don’t work out? What if, what if, what if?

Yet somehow things always do work out and more than five years later the program has steadily progressed, expanded in scope, and gained support. At times it feels like this has happened in spite of my stress and worry, not because of it.

Last week I had a phone interview with Ines, my wise teacher from the online IMC course I recently participated in. After I conveyed what I have been feeling, she asked me, “So what if you did fail?” and this question gave me immediate perspective and clarity. Yes so what if I did fail? It would not be the end of the world. And why should I expect or hope to be free of failure? Isn’t that part of the vicissitudes of life? Praise and blame, gain and loss, joy and sorrow and what else? Despite meditation and intentionally trying to cultivate awareness of annica, why in my heart of hearts do I still expect to be immune?    

This fear of failure and the mental gyrations I have been doing around those feelings have been part of the suffering I have heaped on myself. This is the type of insight that once realized, we are amazed that we have been blind to it for so long…

Another thing she pointed out to me was that the reason I have difficulty concentrating on my administrative tasks is because I am experiencing aversion. Duh! It’s so obvious now but I have been beating myself endlessly with my inability to bear down and concentrate on getting all the financial and programmatic reporting done on time. Yes aversion. Makes total sense now but again up to now I had been totally blind to this. Amazing how blind we can be to our own problems and correspondingly perceptive about the problems of others...

Ines also said that this was a good place to be. This meaning realizing that I have aversion and now having the opportunity to start applying mindfulness to it.

Work is a really tough place for me in general though. It’s a job and organization entirely of my own making from the initial concept, to the board of trustees, the donors, the staff, the curriculum etc. We do really meaningful work – training drop outs, unemployed youth, street youth in organic farming, life skills and entrepreneurship in a residential program. We also work with local farmers on the border of the national park – training them in organic farming, agro-forestry and conservation. We will soon be installing biogas, solar panels and windmills for renewable energy generation. We just received a grant to work with alumni so they can further develop and train others in their communities. We are involved in a large project to provide life skills training and organic farming curriculum to organizations who will be training thousands of former child workers who are being returned to their homes and put back in school. We are in discussions to open an organic gardening and sustainable living learning center in the largest entertainment park in Indonesia.

Yet I complain, gripe, stress, moan and worry all the time. I often fantasize about leaving and getting some cushy job or a very simple job or even better yet a cushy, simple job, any of which in reality would make me extremely unhappy. I fantasize about winning the lottery, having some anonymous benefactor or longlost distant relative give me millions or about finding precious jewels or a bagful of money lying on the street. Other times I think about just getting up and walking away from it all, without any explanation and never coming back. I would walk barefoot across Java without any help or money until I reached the sea.  

  

Conceptually, theoretically I realize that these feelings are where my practice is or should be. Being aware of and applying mindfulness to intense and ongoing feelings of aversion and fear. Fear of failure, fear of the additional work and responsibility success brings, fear of not doing something significant. Aversion to the parts of the work I don’t like, fear of not doing what I should be doing and so not being present and not enjoying the many blessings involved in nurturing disadvantaged youth to care about themselves, other people and nature. A path with heart has embraced me, and shaped my life, yet I am still busy judging myself and finding myself wanting…

My response up to now has been to seek refuge in meditation as a way to get distance, calm down and try to create separation so I can somewhat leave fear and aversion at work. Now it seems like its time to use meditation and the tools as skillful means to engage and explore these feelings.

Sounds like a plan…

A Path With Heart chapter 4: Necessary Healing

"True maturation on the spiritual path requires that we discover the depth of our wounds. As Achaan Chah put it, 'If you haven't cried a number of times, your meditation hasn't really begun."

At the end of my first 10 day retreat, before we broke Noble Silence, we were taught metta or lovingkindness. It was if a dam broke. I started crying, at first desperately trying to stop or at least slow it down or do it silently, then was totally overwhelmed as huge wracking sobs repeatedly washed over and through me in waves. The last time I had really cried was as a high school student more than 20 years before that and even then under very difficult circumstances. Since that retreat, I get teared up quite easily... The scene in the Gandhi movie where all the non violent protesters are beaten and massacred... Seeing Martin Luther King, Jr. giving a speech... Hearing about the progress of youth who graduated from the organic farming and life skills program I helped start and still run... But it has been more than just crying. Having spontaneous feelings of metta arise for others come up even in conflict situations... Acknowledging and embracing the heart, feeling the softening and melting, the tenderness and vulnerability of being human... Being present and compassionate for the small moments with one's children... A wonderful and immeasurable blessing!

"Unhealed pain and rage, unhealed traumas from childhood abuse or abandonment, become powerful unconscious forces in our lives. Until we are able to bring awareness and understanding to our old wounds, we find ourselves repeating their patterns of unfulfilled desire, anger, and confusion over and over again."
 
Wounds, pain and rage... I have spent much of my life wounding myself and others... expressing pain and rage... I used to love playing football with ferocity and reckless disregard for bodily health and safety. If there was a cocky white boy playing, I would try and break him. Blocking, hitting, tackling so hard and relentlessly, chasing him all over the field until he would start to avoid me. Sometimes he would fall down as I approached rather than have me tackle. Aggression and domination. It was both euphoric and addicting.

For a period of time I was an honors student in high school. There were very few students of color in these classes. I remember feeling invisible, inadequate and that the other students were smarter and better than me. I remember sitting in class wishing I wasn't Asian, that my skin was not dark, my eyes not slanted, my hair not black and straight. Eventually I started not to care and then even verbally harass and intimidate the other students and then stopped going to classes altogether. I would spend my time with friends vandalizing the school, making and getting into trouble. Outside of school we got into fights, vandalized buildings, parks, offices, "borrowed" cars, broke open tens of parking meters. After a few close calls, we wound up in the police station. My parents were at a dinner party with other Asian American parents who were bragging about their kids' various achievements when the police called them to come get me... At the time I had a bowl cut and the police thought I had fallen in with the wrong crowd and let me go. In one semester I went from honors student to being asked to leave school.

For years, I would throw my sparring partners as hard as I could, sometimes as if I were trying to throw them through the floor. Double leg throws with the other person airborne and then crashing to the floor. Slamming, booming throws from which people would not get up right away or have to stop. I would feel victorious, glad, sick, disgusted and self loathing all at the same time...

"The first area of healing comes when we develop a relationship of trust with a teacher"

One day my martial teacher in the middle of class told me something to the effect that I was afraid of my sparring partner. This was someone that I routinely put a serious hurting on and I couldn't believe it. My friends ribbed me about this and as time went by I continued to dominate and slam this guy around and mentally disregarded what my teacher had told me. Yet a seed was planted. What was fear? And what was its relationship to domination and aggression? Could it be that domination and aggression was a way of covering up and not facing fear? What would be an alternative? Soft throws are not just technically harder since rather than strength they rely more on positioning and timing but also demand we be more open to someone else's energy rather than imposing our own.

Helped by meditation I have started to see the whole process differently. Sparring does not have to be oppositional. Our real opponent is our own fears, desires, egos. But then even these are not our enemies. Awareness of my feelings not necessarily being me and occurring in a larger container. Watching - oh there is ego, there is aggression... Seeing these feelings come and then go without having to engage or manifest them.

Most recently I started to have feelings of care and even tenderness towards my partners. There is an immediacy and intimacy in letting others in, putting yourself in a vulnerable position and letting others throw you. Who throws and who is being thrown? There is joy, grace and interconnectedness in this mutual dance... What a wonderful thing to be alive for! What a wonderful gift! I am thankful to my martial arts teacher, meditation teacher and those who have shared the path with me as fellow seekers, learners and teachers!

May we continue to learn and grow and express our humanness together!

A Path With Heart chapter 3: Take the One Seat

"Outwardly, it means selecting one practice and one teacher among all of the possibilities, and inwardly, it means having the determination to stick with that practice through whatever difficulties and doubts arise until you have come to true clarity and understanding."

I have been with one martial arts school for 25 years now... and one meditation style for 4 years... I have come to look at these practices as my craft, something to do, put my time in for, day in and day out, not to expect but just keep going. In my martial arts school there is a saying from the first grandmaster. "Jangan yakin akan kemajuan. Harus yakin akan disiplin." Which means don't be sure about advancement. You must be sure about disipline.

This is a difficult thing to do and it seems like the process is never complete. When do you come to true clarity and understanding? There is definitely something there - developing familiarity then intimacy with a practice, dealing with boredom, maxing out and finding a way to go further. But there is also at times frustration, feeling stagnant, doubting, wondering about other paths... And whatever level of advancement or achievement reached brings new doubts, frustration and boredom... I think this is where compassion for oneself is important along with a realization that these feelings are natural and part of the process.

For years I neglected to practice long movements or our equivalent of "kata" seriously. I couldn't see the direct martial application and preferred to spar, practice throwing and evasive blocks. Recently though I have really started to appreciate the poetry and self development aspects of daily polishing long movements. It really does feel like moving meditation. Sometimes I try and cultivate a global awareness and at other times a specific focused concentration. The energy and breath I watch without forcing or striving and see what manifests itself. Sometimes forceful and explosive and others subtle and nuanced. My job is to watch it all unfold. So much beauty, poetry and connection to now. For this I am grateful.     

A Path With Heart chapter 2: Stopping the War

“The unawakened mind tends to make war on the things are.”

I feel like this describes most of my life. From elementary school to high school, college, much of life has been spent doing just that – making war on the way things are. Rejection, aversion, rebellion, avoidance, but not a lot of acceptance much less wisdom. It’s the same plot with predictably unsatisfactory ending but with different characters, lines and locations.

“The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically through gradual training.”

Along with the war, this process of gradual training has been there too. Reading, looking to Taoism, Henry David Thoreau, MLK, Malcolm X, Gandhi and alternative education in high school seemed to be part of an innate process which has all been part of the path. But this was in the mind and part of the ongoing war was the contradiction between what the mind knew to be good and right and what manifested through the body and actions. This contradiction has often been very painful.

“When we let go of our battles and open our hearts to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice.”

Meditation can be a microcosm of this war. The physical pain of sitting, boredom, wanting to do something else, be something or somewhere else, conflicting emotions, memories, and thoughts all do war with the way things are.

“To stop the war and come into the present is to discover a greatness of our own heart that can include the happiness of all beings as inseparable from our own. When we let ourselves feel the fear, the discontent, the difficulties we have always avoided, our heart softens”

Goenkaji often says “Accept things as they are, not as you want them to be.”

It’s a saying that comes back over and over usually when I am not accepting things as they are but rather hoping they’ll be as I want them…

Listening to this, realizing what is going on but without reproach, brings about some softening, melting in the body, in the heart and at times even in action.

“As we allow the world to touch us deeply, we recognize that just as there is pain in our own lives, so there is pain in everyone else’s life.”

Yes, how true. Can we use our own pain as a gate to understanding and offering compassion to others? Perhaps at the start this is silent and from afar but with time, aspiration and more melting, this becomes action however modest.

A Path With Heart chapter 1: Did I Love Well?

A Path With Heart is one of a very few books that speaks directly to me, articulating what may have been half conscious or half buried, at the same time clarifying and elevating the internal discourse and my interactions in the world. Jack Kornfield’s gentle wisdom is always inspiring and I have found it to be a continual catalyst for transformation.

Chapter 1’s title “Did I Love Well?” is the question to ask. It is a question that frames effort, grounds ambition, nurtures humility and challenges us to do more.

“Does this path have a heart? If it does the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.”

The eyes read and the mind comprehends but these words imprint on my heart. Over and over again until I feel like I am there with Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda.

The meditation/reflection on ones death was also powerful. The simplicity and immediacy of real goodness. As a child I remember feeding stay cats and how it felt as they crunched on the dry food we gave them. In high school I remember helping out a few times as a teacher’s assistant for a class of learning disabled children. It was really tough and they often did not respond as one expected or thought they should. Last year I opened a door for an older woman. It was spontaneous. These acts are in contrast to what I do with TLF which is always in a larger context, planned with specific expectations and calculations. Not to say that it isn’t genuine but this reflection reminds me that I need to make an effort so I don’t lose immediacy, spontaneity and ultimately connection.

“In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.”

This I also have read and repeated over and over like a mantra. It sometimes comes to mind when I am lost in a cloud of administration, management and planning and one of the youth at TLF asks me something that doesn’t fit into these boxes. I am reminded to try and be present and answer simply. Or when my children want to be comforted or even just heard when I have work or existential burdens weighing me down. It’s in fact a blessing for oneself to remember Mother Theresa’s words. For all our grand plans and ambitions, in the end this is what really matters.

The lovingkindness meditation is one I practice almost every day at the end of my daily meditation. I learned it on the last day of the first 10 day retreat I did. I found myself crying uncontrollably and it felt like my heart had layers peeled off it. In the beginning it was hardest to feel loving kindness for oneself. Like trying to get water from a dry well. It’s an amazing thing to feel lovingkindness spontaneously arise or come up during a difficult situation where previously I would have been angry or vengeful. That’s not to say that I still don’t have negative feelings but somehow it’s different. I can forgo reproving myself, feeling guilty and get onto actually being present and start to do something. For this I am very grateful.

May we all be filled with lovingkindness
May we all be well
May we all be peaceful and at ease
May we all be happy

Jack Kornfield quotes Albert Camus, “We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves.”