Feeling good and bad

Reblogging this to focus on the critical part.

So we feel bad. Usually we fight to bring this round and feel good. So we perhaps go jogging, or have a sleep, or eat some chocolate, or have a drink, or phone a friend, or watch a film, or read a book etc etc etc etc. Isn't this the structure of unenlightened life?

So we are enlightened and we feel bad. We look at how to bring this round and feel good again. So we perhaps go jogging, or have a sleep, or eat some chocolate, or have a drink, or phone a friend, or watch a film, or read a book etc etc etc etc. Isn't this the structure of enlightened life?

What is the difference?

Quickly an example of unenlightened. I overheard someone on holiday calling a friend and saying that they had been for a jog, been to gym, done yoga, meditated and then said  "I should be feeling much better than I am." This is the essence of the problem and thank you to them for putting it so clearly. Who matters what the feelings are? There are just feelings! Whether there is someone there to feel them changes nothing. So note what the problem was. She wasn't complaining that the feelings were not nice, she was complaining that she shouldn't be having those feelings. Great who should have then then? Someone else? The complaint is not over the nature of the feelings, but that they are here with "me." We are happy if we can just push them away, even to someone else. And in fact a huge amount of the bad things that people do is just trying to get away from unpleasant things, and in our panic to get rid of them we dump them on other people. But things are just what they are regardless whether they happen to me or not. If we had a bad feeling happening to us and a Buddha magically stopped it happening to us, how would it be different? It wouldn't, it would still be there, just not connected to us any more - which is the exact same.

I know someone who lost a parent recently and they are suffering very badly. So we all know the sadness at loss, and it can be overwhelming. I know the start of the blog includes this. It can suck the whole meaning of life out and leave you empty. But we absolutely should not confuse this quite natural response from the struggle to get away from it and wish it was not happening. In fact things just happen, they can be as sudden as a flash of lightening, but there is no denying that they happen. The sticking point is dragging this extra thing around that they must happen "to". If we think about it: by the time we know about something it has always already happened. So what else is there to do. It has happened and we now know about it. What remains to do? Well there is the natural process of mourning that this causes as the body and mind process the loss, miss the person, realise they will never (or until death or rebirth depending upon belief) see them again (certainly not in this form), recall precious memories and make new plans. Just a lot of rethinking and processing. This is all natural. But that is it, it all kicks off a new stream of experience and not necessarily an always pleasant one. But one anyway. The problem occurs when we try and resist this. This hidden "self" (that we think things happens to) somehow doesn't want to go on the journey. In fact the possibility of not going on the journey is only possible because we think there is a secret self inside our experiences. Armed with this belief we argue with experience that we aren't doing it. And that argument distracts us from what is really going on and messes us up.**

** There is a little story possible here of a Box that we are given it by the Devil who tell us to take it unopened to a destination, and we will die if we open it before arriving. All the way along the journey we will ignore many wonderful opportunities and don't really engage in the journey. At the end when we open the box we discover it was empty all along. Or it could be the box eventually gets smashed (dies) and we don't see that it was empty all along (important: empty of a solid thing that exists unchanged through time - perhaps better we put something like a frog/unicorn in the box as a kid and when it breaks decades later we see that the thing in there is long gone - it was not a permanent self). This is the unenlightened life. The enlightened life is when we open the box early (and die?)  and realise not to worry about any thing in the box. ***

*** This is possibly not helpful cos how do we actually "open the box", what is the metaphor? That is the hard bit. Buddha taught the 8 Fold Noble Path to lead us up to the point of opening the box, but we must walk this our self, no one can do this for us. And the nature of opening the box is unlike anything we have experienced before. It is complete revelation of the most deeply seated assumptions that we never even knew we take for granted. Realising the sound of the machine in The Machine Stops, except it is the opposite: realising that something we always thought was there is not there. But because its always there we don't even notice it. So its realising that the self that we assume is everywhere, is firstly everywhere and then that it doesn't even exist (as an unchanging solid entity that is the same through time and our whole life).

Anyway, returning to the original thread: the unenlightened person sees the "bad" as part of themselves. The badness has breached the castle walls and is inside and is "their's"; it somehow affects a person called "them". It means they have no choice but to act on it. The problem stops being just about feeling bad, and becomes about "me". Bad feelings exist, no great issue there. But when it become "my" bad then we are compelled automatically to deal with it and get it away.

The enlightened person just sees the bad feeling. Its a feeling like any other. No big deal. Because the feeling does not belong to any one, its just what it is, no one is dragged into it automatically.

The result may well be the same like go and watch a movie, but the unenlightened person is running from the bad feeling to get it as far away from them self as possible. For the enlightened person because there is no one involved there is no running to do. Who is there to actually run? The bad feeling exists without reference to a centre, the universe is infinite with space for everything, rather than it all crowding in on some some centre, around some "person". We are just the air of experience, rather than a tree standing in the middle with things happening to it. If the enlightened person fixes the bad feeling by a watching film then great. If they fail and the feeling is still there then so be it. Obviously a tough emotion or problem. But so be it. Ultimately the enlightened person can just sit there and watch the feeling for what it is without there being anyone for it affect.

Its an interesting thing that the actual phenomenon is identical for both the enlightened and the unenlightened. The Buddhas experience the exact same world as the unenlightened. Things happen. And we don't have much control over those things. This is the way of the world, better deal with that as we find it cos that IS reality. The difference is only that the unenlightened put the "near world" into the Dative case so that it is happening to someone, that person being them. Its as subtle a compulsion as a tense change. Buddha says non-self (anatta) but the problem with that is it actually uses the problem in the remedy. Fixed-Self is the problem, and while saying "not that" that we have directed the listener to the problem. Buddha actually says that ALL phenomena are "not self." So we look around and we are being told that absolutely NONE of that is us. Heidegger uses the German word Dasein which means "there being" or "being over there." This over-thereness of the world is what proves its "not self" its always over there. A tree is clearly "over there" especially if someone else is standing under it. But even when we are standing under it, it is still over there but now a few centimetres rather than metres. Even the phenomenon of a feeling which we can't locate "in the world" (you can't stand under a feeling) is still "over there" just in a different not physical space. The fact we can't physically walk away from a bad feeling makes it feel closer, and people try other displacement activities to try and block out bad feelings. But it is still just a phenomenon that is coming at us and so is over there. Its important to note that even in the midst of the worst crisis that it has not been around forever, and just as it has occurred it will "unoccur" and we will be left alone again. All things comes to us, and then leave (if we let them).

Now there I am using the "coming at us" experience to illustrate Buddha's "not us" and over there. All things are coming at us. But in there lies the other problem. Because if we change the focus, even just slightly from the "coming at" experience to the "us" then we have slipped back into "atta" or fixed self. It's quite possible for a wind to blow through a landscape and be blowing in on ever point without us picking a particular point or tree in that landscape for it to be affecting. When we take our experiences and place a tree at the centre then we holding on to the notion of a "fixed self" and that is the whole problem of life.

It's a subtle thing. For the enlightened things still happen to them obviously, but the emphasis is all on the "happening". For the unenlightened the emphasis is all on the "them"

It means that other bad things that happen to other people may gain more relevance and we might invite someone to the cinema to help them just as we tried with our self.

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Here's a thought. Assume there is a fixed self. Since everything in our whole life must happen to that fixed self, and there can never be an experience without it can't we just factor it out of all experiences?