Day 380: The Great Way

Tried to work (unsuccessfully), tried to write (unsuccessfully), and now I’m trying yet again to get something down in my journal. There’s fatigue here, but not in a I-didn’t-get-enough-sleep-last-night way. It’s a more deep-seated restlessness and discomfort that I can’t quite put my finger on.

The typical approach I take is the one that almost all of us use: chase pleasantness, push away unpleasantness. I try to find out the cause behind the discomfort (Is there something bothering me? Why do I feel like this?) and come up with strategies for getting rid of it (Should I sleep more? Should I drink caffeine? How do I make this go away?).

But what if I just let it be? What If I just accepted this experience as it is? Not as a 4D-chess meta strategy to make it go away, but just embraced the moment, discomfort and all?

This, to me, gets at the heart of meditation and spirituality. The goal isn’t to prevent unpleasantness from ever happening, but to accept it exactly as it is when it does inevitably arise. To stop the incessant grasping for “good” feelings and shirking away from “bad” ones. To recognize all feelings, moods, thoughts, everything as temporary appearances that come and go. And letting reality be as it 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.

- The Third Patriarch of Zen (source)