Peaks and valleys

In thinking about dukkha, or ordinary human dissatisfaction, we can observe how our experience seems to go from one (relative) extreme to another. We might have a truly sublime meditation session and emerge with a lingering sense of peace and compassion for all beings. The next sitting might be less glorious and may result in a feeling of disappointment because we remember the former peak experience. Isn’t this the way of things? We ride the peaks and hope that they will last, and then our hopes are dashed when the inevitable trough comes.

We can’t have waves without troughs between them. Sometimes the waves and troughs are of relatively small amplitude and sometimes they are enormous, even overwhelming. If we are suffering grief or sadness, we may be surprised by moments when the clouds clear and we feel light. But how could we know sadness if we didn’t know joy? And how could we know joy if we didn’t know sadness? This was the great lesson of a popular animated movie called “Inside Out” (2015). We can try to be happy all the time, but it’s not sustainable. It’s not the nature of human life to be always sad or always happy.

Sometimes we experience gain, sometimes loss; sometimes disrepute and sometimes fame; sometimes blame and sometimes praise; sometimes pleasure and sometimes pain. No one escapes these peaks and valleys, though our kamma may incline us towards some experiences more than others. These are the eight worldly conditions the Buddha discusses in Anguttara Nikaya 8.6, where he points out that an “uninstructed worldling” will meet all of these conditions with obsession, which inevitably causes suffering. But one who sees things as they are meets all eight wordily conditions with the understanding: “this is impermanent, this is dukkha, this is subject to change”. She is not obsessed by conditions as they come and go, and is not attracted or repelled by them.

The Third Patriarch of Zen wrote a long poem, the first verse of which is:

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

Can we find the internal gyroscope that will help us steady ourselves on the heaving ship of our experience? Can taking refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha help us to keep ourselves upright when the boat rocks? Do we have some other internal stabilizer?

It would be nice if there were a quick fix for our trials, but we know that balance is acquired painstakingly, one mindful moment at a time. Shutting down doesn’t work; running away doesn’t work. We have to find a way to be fully here, now, with all of it — the good, the bad and the ugly, the highlights and the lowlights. If we accept the challenge of living unreservedly, in intimate, flowing contact with our own direct experience, we’ll be moving in the right direction.