The move from Grabbing to Letting Go

This idea of grabbing is really so engrained that we don't even notice it or how deeply it comes from inside us.

Probably we meditate with the idea of some achievement. Many start the path hearing of Buddha's Enlightenment and wanting that for themselves like it is a gold nugget he found in a stream. We hear about meditation and the mind and all the strange and wonderful things and want these for our self. There is the paranormal and we hear of strange abilities and vision and insights that people get and we want them for our self. We hear about Letting Go and we want that for our self. We gain focus on the breath and we take that for our self. We start to Let Go and we take that for our self. We gain Jhana or Dhyana or Samadhi and we take that for our self.

But it is all connected and bound together by this move to take for our self.

So we learn Mahayana and we become a Bodhisattva with the vow to enlighten all beings before our self. Surely we can't take that for our self. But we wear the badge of being a Bodhisattva all the same.

Letting Go is the opposite of all this. It really means to allow thing to carry on away from us in the stream. Things turn up and we experience them and then they go away and we don't follow them or try and hold them. But you can't try to not hold something. That becomes a new type of holding. We have to undergo a change of attitude. We must let things be what they are and realise we are not involved.

Easier said than done.

Tiredness is a good one. Are we really tired? It can make meditation very hard when we are trying to stay awake. But who or what is staying awake? That question is aimed at observing that tiredness is really something that bodies and brains get. They do it all by themselves with or without is. We think we can fight off the tiredness by some concentration and make it go away like we think we can push away and escape all unwanted things. But a tired body is tired, no escaping it. What instead we should appreciate it that while bodies and minds get tired, we don't get tired! That's a hard one to get clear on, but only because we are grabbing again. We believe that tiredness is mine, so we grab it and don't see it as just something that is happened in the world. Yeah sure this body and mind didn't get much sleep for a few nights so its tired. Great it can do that all by itself getting tired, I don't need to grab it. I can just let tiredness happen and sleep happen and being awake again happen. Got nothing to do with me at all. Just let it happen.

Now something comes from this. If everything is just happening and we are no longer grabbing it so it can just be itself. Then where and what use am I?

Grabbing and I are connected. In the very act of grabbing we generate a sense of self. We are grabbing for me. I am getting something. It is me that is holding. This whole process is unnecessary and adds nothing. Grab the tiredness and believe I am tired makes no difference from just getting tired. Tiredness doesn't care about being held by us or not, it's gonna do its thing regardless of any "us".

So we let go of tired and just allow it to happen. Perhaps we have plans so we don't want "tired" to be there and we can ignore it and take stimulants but obviously the body does what it does. We can't make it go away. Tiredness is still there, and stimulants will alter the chemistry. But eventually body and mind will sleep all by itself. No need to grab that just let it happen.

SO when me meditate and find we are tired actually we are not tired. We just notice that the body or mind is tired. It may well sleep. But we can in fact watch all this come and go without needing to grab or feel linked to any of it.

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The number one misunderstanding here is to think that Letting Go is like "pushing away." You can't push away what never came in in the first place. When you let go there is nothing coming in to push away. And nothing going out that you think for a second makes any difference. If "letting go" was as easy as emptying out a hot air balloon to make it go higher we would all do it. The Hindus say that liberation is sweeter than honey on the tongue. With persuasion like that we throw everything out of the air balloon and find no honey on the tongue and nothing has changed other than we are a bit messed up at the craziness of it. But such a catastrophe may highlight that we are still very fixated and confused by things, thinking we are a think in the same way as other things. Thinking we occupy space and time. Our body occupies space, and senses and thoughts occupy time. We don't.