Embracing Opposites
As awareness strengthens through practice, we begin to see more and more of ourselves. More precisely, we see more and more parts of the mind and are able to feel and move between a wider range of views, emotions, and thoughts. We may begin to suspect that we are not going find the one true thing, and indeed, we may find ourselves becoming comfortable embracing opposites. This is normal, and indeed healthy.
For example, the deeper I look into the way experience is "empty" – having no abiding essence and no owner – the “fuller” it feels. All of my attempts to freeze experience into concepts that I can hold onto (denying the truth of emptiness) serve also to diminish its fullness. Emptiness and fullness grow together.
The experience of time also works this way. We train to bring the mind fully into the immediate, present moment, clarifying what is actually here, not conflated with past or future. I find that this simple training has also resulted in the ability to perceive vast time, to see body and mind as part of a long, possibly beginningless flow. Both perceptions can ease suffering and support the operation of wisdom.
And what about compassion and not-self? Amazingly, practice deepens both our care for the suffering of all types of beings, and our understanding that there are, in actuality, no beings. Precisely because nothing is independent and separate, we come to care about everything. Everything and nothing are not so distinct.
What does this mean for our practice? An important element of practice is to get comfortable with seeming inconsistencies. One form of this is to learn to be OK with the tension of opposites, even within our own thoughts and behaviors. Interestingly, a key mental quality that supports this is joy: The lightness of joy opens the mind, relieves it of the need for ideal principles, and gives it the flexibility to move between views.
I used to study with a martial arts master who also offered a Chinese medicine healing practice. His own practice began moving into more aggressive kinds of fighting, and I noticed that it only deepened his healing practice. He seemed to naturally embrace opposites and to stretch himself in this way. We may do the specifics differently in our own practice, but the movement toward expansion is analogous.
I have also worked with a mentor who is both one of the most reverent and one of the most irreverent people I know. I appreciate this because I value both.
Joseph Goldstein offers a couple of related quotes in his book, Mindfulness. They concern the seeming inconsistency between the personal, moral law of karma and the impersonal, empty nature of experience:
There is the famous statement of Padmasambhava, the great Indian adept who brought Buddhism to Tibet: “Though my view is as vast as the sky, my attention to the law of karma is as fine as a grain of barley flour.” … The Korean Zen master Seung Sahn Sunim summed up the integration of emptiness and karma with this quintessential Zen statement: “There is no right and no wrong, but right is right and wrong is wrong.”
The mind is getting bigger. What kind of mind can really hold everything? One that does not seek to hold anything, like the sky.
Such a mind is both extraordinary and ordinary. There is a wonderful sutta called Wonderful and Marvelous (MN 123). Ānanda and some other monks are talking about the amazing qualities and supernormal abilities of the Buddha, including his former birth in the Tusita Heaven, the manner of his entering his mother’s womb, and his taking seven steps and speaking just after birth.
The Buddha listens to all of this and does not refute it, but adds, “Remember this too as a wonderful and marvelous quality of the Tathagata [Buddha]: Feelings are known as they arise, as they are present, and as they disappear; perceptions are known as they arise, as they are present, and as they disappear; thoughts are known as they arise, as they are present, and as they disappear.”
From the grandest to the simplest. May your practice span it all.
As awareness strengthens through practice, we begin to see more and more of ourselves. More precisely, we see more and more parts of the mind and are able to feel and move between a wider range of views, emotions, and thoughts. We may begin to suspect that we are not going find the one true thing, and indeed, we may find ourselves becoming comfortable embracing opposites. This is normal, and indeed healthy.
For example, the deeper I look into the way experience is "empty" – having no abiding essence and no owner – the “fuller” it feels. All of my attempts to freeze experience into concepts that I can hold onto (denying the truth of emptiness) serve also to diminish its fullness. Emptiness and fullness grow together.
The experience of time also works this way. We train to bring the mind fully into the immediate, present moment, clarifying what is actually here, not conflated with past or future. I find that this simple training has also resulted in the ability to perceive vast time, to see body and mind as part of a long, possibly beginningless flow. Both perceptions can ease suffering and support the operation of wisdom.
And what about compassion and not-self? Amazingly, practice deepens both our care for the suffering of all types of beings, and our understanding that there are, in actuality, no beings. Precisely because nothing is independent and separate, we come to care about everything. Everything and nothing are not so distinct.
What does this mean for our practice? An important element of practice is to get comfortable with seeming inconsistencies. One form of this is to learn to be OK with the tension of opposites, even within our own thoughts and behaviors. Interestingly, a key mental quality that supports this is joy: The lightness of joy opens the mind, relieves it of the need for ideal principles, and gives it the flexibility to move between views.
I used to study with a martial arts master who also offered a Chinese medicine healing practice. His own practice began moving into more aggressive kinds of fighting, and I noticed that it only deepened his healing practice. He seemed to naturally embrace opposites and to stretch himself in this way. We may do the specifics differently in our own practice, but the movement toward expansion is analogous.
I have also worked with a mentor who is both one of the most reverent and one of the most irreverent people I know. I appreciate this because I value both.
Joseph Goldstein offers a couple of related quotes in his book, Mindfulness. They concern the seeming inconsistency between the personal, moral law of karma and the impersonal, empty nature of experience:
There is the famous statement of Padmasambhava, the great Indian adept who brought Buddhism to Tibet: “Though my view is as vast as the sky, my attention to the law of karma is as fine as a grain of barley flour.” … The Korean Zen master Seung Sahn Sunim summed up the integration of emptiness and karma with this quintessential Zen statement: “There is no right and no wrong, but right is right and wrong is wrong.”
The mind is getting bigger. What kind of mind can really hold everything? One that does not seek to hold anything, like the sky.
Such a mind is both extraordinary and ordinary. There is a wonderful sutta called Wonderful and Marvelous (MN 123). Ānanda and some other monks are talking about the amazing qualities and supernormal abilities of the Buddha, including his former birth in the Tusita Heaven, the manner of his entering his mother’s womb, and his taking seven steps and speaking just after birth.
The Buddha listens to all of this and does not refute it, but adds, “Remember this too as a wonderful and marvelous quality of the Tathagata [Buddha]: Feelings are known as they arise, as they are present, and as they disappear; perceptions are known as they arise, as they are present, and as they disappear; thoughts are known as they arise, as they are present, and as they disappear.”
From the grandest to the simplest. May your practice span it all.
