Sad But True

This world- absolutely pure
As is. Behind the fear,

Vulnerability. Behind that,
Sadness, then compassion
And behind that the vast sky.

 --Rick Fields

 “Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share 
your heart with others.”  

― Chögyam Trungpa 

Sometimes, insight and healing emerge slowly during the course of Practice.   Like spring unfolding across the palette of April and May, our world slowly greens and blooms.  What was dark, harsh and frigid, slowly brightens, softens and warms.  At a point we notice:  It's different now than before.

At other times, insight and healing emerge like a bolt of lightning!

 Zap! 

Sometimes coming with a torrential downpour of tears, sometimes not, a Grand Gestalt comes together in a heartbeat. In a flash, in an instant,  we really Get It! (Or perhaps, more accurately-- It Gets Us.)  

We can't help but notice.  It's different now than before.

I was fortunate enough to be at Himalayan Views, a nearby spiritual gift shop/bookstore awhile back, to hear about a woman's experience of one of those moments.  Suffering from what was diagnosed as "clinical depression" since adolescence, she had come across one of Pema Chodron's teachings years later that focused on what Pema's teacher, Chogyam Trungpa called "the genuine heart of sadness. "

Zap!

As the woman read that passage that day, an awakening had come in a flash.  She knew.  At that instant she 
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discovered a whole new way to hold her experience.  In a burst of tears -- and then with rainbows glistening through her tears -- the whole world had shifted.  She saw clearly that her deep sadness about the human condition wasn't a "medical condition", it was an essential Connection to Bodhichitta, the soft and tender core of our Spiritual Heart.  

Like many of us, this woman had felt the power of this aspect of a deep connection to the Mysterious Reality of Life/Death as a child, but nobody in her life knew what it was or what to do with it.  As she read the teaching from Pema Chodron that day, she now understood that her sadness wasn't a personal flaw, an illness.   That day, she knew that in her Heart of Hearts that she had touched what the others had touched and understood as Bodhichitta.  Now, she just needed to learn how to work with it.  

With the assistance of a supportive counselor and a regular meditation practice, she successfully decreased, and then discontinued entirely, her use of antidepressant medications.  At the point she was sharing the story, she had been successfully, sometimes quite joyfully, navigating her life for a couple of years -- drug free.

Please understand: My point here is not that medications are always the wrong approach.  (As a child of the sixties, how could I ever claim that drugs are always a bad thing?  Stephan Gaskin and Ram Dass weren't the only ones who learned a few things under the influence.)  Over the years, I have had friends whose quality of life, at least for a time, has been improved through the use of prescription drugs to address their psychological health. I've had friends, like the woman I met that day whose quality of life improved only when they stopped relying on their medications.  Drugs simply are what they are. 

What I am pointing to here, is that there is a great value in exploring what our society
conditions us to avoid, the so-called "negative" emotions.   Oftentimes, "Don't be sad" can actually be a horrible message.  In fact in the world today, we are in desperate need of teachings and practices that enable us to approach the sadness and grief that are inherent in the fabric of Life/Death with understanding and skill. *   For, as many have seen through the ages, deep within our own personal sadness is a shared existential sadness that connects us to one another and to the One Love that we are immersed in.  Rather than "harden our hearts", we have the choice to soften, to open, to Love fully and completely.  Once touched and understood, the Genuine Heart of Sadness becomes the pathway to a fundamental fearlessness, boundless compassion,  --and deep joy.

As the Practice develops we see that in coming to intimately know the entire menagerie of our emotional boogiemen, a wider gaze and deeper freedom emerge.  On the meditation cushion --and in our lives -- we find that the entire range of our human feelings (fear, sadness, anger, confusion, shame, to name a few) can be patiently embraced, gently explored and understood -- and ultimately transformed into greater compassion and clarity.  Rather than stagger along with our minds clouded by our conditioning, acting out time and time again, we increasingly find ourselves living lives from our hearts.  At times, we even find ourselves dancing freely within the infinite expanse of a clear blue sky.

It just takes Practice.

* I've just finished reading Die Wise by Stephen Jenkinson.  An amazing critique of our society's dysfunction, this former hospice social worker/chaplain, now teacher and spiritual activist, writes that Grief "is an ability as vital to our emotional and spiritual and community life as the skill of love." One of his teachers, the legendary Brother Blue, once said that he often prayed to remain heart-broken. 

Originally posted April 18, 2014. Revised and updated