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

 “When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.”
― Pema Chödrön

Sometimes, insight and healing emerge slowly during the course of our lives. 

Like spring unfolding across the palette of April and May, our Practice deepens.  Green shoots appear.  Buds opens.  What was tan, stark, and frigid, gradually brightens, softens, and warms. 

Then, at a certain point, we notice.  It's different now than it was before.  Nothing has changed, yet everything has changed. 

At other times, Zap! Insight and Healing emerge like a bolt of lightning!

Sometimes, this bursts forth with a torrential downpour of tears. Sometimes not. Yet, in a heartbeat there is a Grand Gestalt.  In a flash, in an instant, there is Crystalline Clarity.  We really get It! Or perhaps -- more accurately-- It gets us.  

Everything has changed, but nothing has changed.  Yet, it is different now than it was before.

The Genuine Heart of Sadness

A few years ago, I had the good fortunate to stop by Himalayan Views, a nearby spiritual gift shop/bookstore, to hear a woman describe one of those moments.  She was sitting in the back reading area of the store, and as is often the case, I made the effort to smile and say hello.  (A childhood rebel, I never agreed with "don't talk to strangers.")  Soon, I found myself chatting with her about the book she was reading, and comparing notes on our lives and spiritual practice.  

Her eyes were clear and kind.  Her voice was gentle, yet powerful, as she shared her story.  

She was in her mid-thirties at the time of her Awakening.   Suffering from what had been diagnosed as "clinical depression, medicated since early adolescence, she had come across a book of Pema Chodron's teachings.  She was drawn page by page into an deepening awareness of a truth she felt she had always known,  a truth she never had heard from the people in her world.

 

Then, when she read of what Pema's teacher, Chogyam Trungpa had called "the genuine heart of sadness," Reality asserted itself. Her life was transformed. 

Zap!

At that very moment, She knew. 
(READ MORE)
Encountering Life As It Is

In a burst of tears -- and then with rainbows glistening through her tears -- the whole world shifted.  She saw clearly that her experience of deep, sometimes debilitating, sadness about the human condition wasn't a sickness. It was her Connection to Bodhichitta, the soft and tender core of our Spiritual Heart.  
 
Like most of us, she had been quite sensitive to the spiritual dimension of life as a child.  In her openness to this mysterious Reality, she had felt a deep connection to the reality of the human condition in all its manifestations.  As well as moments of wordless wonder, the suffering that the Buddha and spiritual masters had perceived as inherent in the human condition was also part of her lived experience. 

 

In some cultures, this sensitivity would have been recognized as the gift it was.  She may have received the acknowledgment, support, and guidance she needed to understand how to work with the experiences and the energy of her sadness in a healing way.  Instead, in a society steeped in scientific materialism, a capitalist economic system, and distorted forms of religion, she was told by her family, school social workers, and psychiatrists that she had a chemical imbalance, a broken brain.  Like so many people today, medication was presented as the primary answer.  

 

As so often happens, this approach fostered an even deeper disconnection from herself and others. Rather than receiving the support of a community that understood that we are Spiritual Beings,  she was told she was fundamentally broken.  She had suffered the stigma of "mental illness" throughout most of her life.

As this woman read the teaching from Pema Chodron that day, the Connection was made.  This precious and gentle soul now understood that her sadness was not a personal failing.  It wasn't an illness.  

 

Remembering her childhood Catholicism, she recalled that Jesus had said Blessed be those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.  She now understood.  It was a Blessing to feel her heart's sadness.  That day, she knew that in her Heart of Hearts that she glimpsed what Buddha and Jesus, and countless other saints, sages, and seers had seen.  In opening her heart to the sadness, she opened her heart to a joy that is not dependent on external conditions.  

 

She had touched the One Love. 

Now, she just needed to learn how to work with it.  

The Theory and the Practice

With the assistance of a supportive counselor, a regular meditation practice, and a supportive community of spiritual friends, this budding Bodhisattva slowly decreased, then completely  discontinued, the use of the antidepressant medications she had been prescribed for over two decades. By the time she was sharing her story that day, this courageous and inspiring woman had been successfully, sometimes quite joyfully, navigating her life for over three years -- completely 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?  (Stephen Gaskin and Ram Dass weren't the only ones who experienced significant awakenings under their influence. LOL).  Sometimes, medications can be helpful. 

Yet, each of us walks a unique path.  There is no "one size fits all" path to healing.

Over the years, I've had friends whose quality of life, at least for a time, has been improved through the use of prescription drugs to make their lives more manageable.  Yet, I've also had many friends, who were like the woman I met that day.  Their quality of life improved only when they stopped believing that they are biological misfits who have to rely on medications.  

 

The drugs simply are what they are.  With our without them, we each can find our way to an open heart and a clear mind.

Sad But True

 

At age 79, speaking from my own experience, I have seen that there is a great value in exploring what our society conditions us to avoid.  "Don't be sad," is often a horrible message!  The so-called "negative" emotions are part of the human condition.  They are natural responses to life.   As human beings, we need to feel, to grief, to cry.  Always keeping "a stiff upper lip" disconnects us from our hearts ability to feel the Truth of the Matter.  (It also makes it hard to talk freely -- and to laugh.)

In the world today, we desperately need people who have the courage to open their hearts and minds, to face reality as it is.  As the mystic saints, seers, and sages of all religions have seen throughout the ages, a Compassionate Heart is the Key to the Kingdom.  Although we may first have to face and embrace the fear that shrouds true vulnerability, deep within and beyond our own personal sadness is the shared existential sadness that connects us to one another and to the One Love that pervades the universe.  Rather than "harden our hearts" to life, we have the choice to soften, to open, to Love fully and completely.  It is there that we find comfort and joy.

Although it takes commitment, effort and patience, we can learn to embrace with understanding and skill that which we've been conditioned to avoid.  With Practice, our own soft and tender heart becomes a gateway to fundamental fearlessness, boundless compassion -- and deep joy. 

Rather than stagger along with our minds clouded by our conditioning,  repressing our feelings or acting out again and again, over time, we increasingly find ourselves living from our hearts.  Allowing ourselves to feel deep sadness, we are able to feel deep joy.  

In special moments, we may even find ourselves dancing freely, like dandelion seeds glistening in the sun, sailing within the infinite expanse of the One Love.

It just takes Practice.



Originally posted April 18, 2014. Revised and updated.