Getting through the Door
Life brings us a series of encounters, with ourself, with others, with things in the world. How much dukkha we experience depends largely on how we meet these encounters – dukkha being the generic word for the stress, struggle, suffering, or unsatisfactoriness that can accompany experience. We could think of each encounter as a doorway to the next moment, our response shaping where the doorway leads.
We can meet life with obsession, grasping, resistance, confusion, and other fruitless approaches that literally feel heavy, sticky, or painful. There are also options that involve less or no dukkha. These could resemble flowing or dancing with a situation, showing clear strength without aggression, acting with tenderness or love, or simply standing in awareness and letting things unfold. We can’t always choose the best option, but Dharma practice helps tremendously in giving more options.
The doorways we meet in meditation are not so different from those in daily life. We encounter ongoing mindstates, thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Where they lead is linked to what we do with them. The range of possible responses is usually larger than we think. We are limited mostly by our own fixed views as well as by the strength of our awareness.
Consider a concrete example from daily life – a case involving people I know. One is a professor, an older American man, and the other is his grad student, a young woman from Korea. This situation happened a number of years ago, and the various responses are my own invention to illustrate the point.
These two folks found that they could not get through a door together. In the professor’s world, he should open the door for the woman. In the student’s world, she should open the door for the older man. Approaching a door together created a clash of incompatible customs.
What to do? Consider some options.
1. Each stands firm and refuses to budge. No one gets through the door.
2. It becomes a power struggle with one person “winning” and getting to keep their custom while the other one “loses” and has to change their preferred way. They get through the door, but someone is unhappy.
Clearly these two options involve nothing but dukkha. There are many better responses.
3. One person decides to do it the other’s way. Here, the motivation is important and could vary widely. The person could be doing this out of fear, disdain, pity, conceit, confusion, wanting to look good, wanting to connect, compassion, generosity, appreciation, or other possibilities (and maybe more than one at once). Maybe one is aware of these motivations, and maybe not.
4. They realize that their customs are incompatible and have an earnest conversation about that. Each explains why it is important and meaningful to do it the way they do. They end up feeling more connected to their own culture and to each other, and also have some sense of why others could think and act differently. They come to some mutual agreement about how they will go through doors such that both people’s ways are honored.
5. They see the arbitrariness of such customs and laugh together at the moment when they get stuck in front of a door. With full awareness, someone opens the door, they both get through, and later they can’t even recall who opened it for whom. Far into the future, they have a shared joke about doors. And they are each able to handle the odd door customs of yet other cultures that they encounter later.
6. In the moment of approaching a door, one or both people simply forget that they have a certain custom, and they get through the door without noticing it.
Which of these is best? Whichever one brings the least suffering in the moment.
This is a very mundane example, something any of us might encounter in our work, home, or community life. But these kinds of choices also occur in cushion practice.
Continuing with the simile of doors and customs for how to open them, the “customs” in our mind are the concepts and stories we tell about who we are, how we got here, what we are doing, and what will happen in the future – stories about our self. Like worldly customs, these mental customs are essentially arbitrary and sometimes incompatible. One story says that we are a capable person who got where we are because of our own mettle. Another says that our boss is the cause of our tension headaches. And a third one says that we have developed good sensitivity through being married to a person who needs our care. With all these in the background, we sit down to meditate, intending to focus on the breath.
Sitting in meditation, we come to many doors where we take the route of distraction or dullness, wanting or resisting, and sometimes we get hung up and cannot pass through, like the professor and his student. It is important to realize that there are many possibilities and to make a good choice.
Suppose there is a pain in your back during sitting. Do you allow your attention to be drawn there and then sit resisting the pain with clenched jaw, irritation, and thoughts about how it is ruining your peace? Other options include placing attention elsewhere; gently feeling into the pain with curiosity until its solidity dissolves; expanding awareness so that the pain is a small spot in a larger space of awareness; using the pain as an object of concentration; observing the mind that is sensing the pain; and doing inquiry around the present-moment attitude to pain.
More subtle experiences also include choice, although it may not be obvious at first. As we observe the mind, we can notice how quickly it flickers with feelings, intentions, and immediate responses to stimulation. But it can also return again and again to a single thought train, playing it out repeatedly and fruitlessly. It can be a bit confusing to see how the mind rapidly navigates by snap judgments and shortcuts, and yet is also subject to long monologues centered on “myself.” Where is the choice amidst all this habituated terrain?
Here is where the strength of attention matters. When the mind can stay calmly with experience as it gets stuck at a doorway, it can see how it is getting stuck and also see more choices. This is the most basic mindfulness instruction: Learn to observe a reaction instead of blindly playing it out. But it applies more subtly also. For instance, what happens at the end of the out-breath such that the mind slips away into thought? Or when I get drawn toward a memory, what am I believing about my self and what it is important to do at that moment? Stronger mindfulness helps. And beyond mindfulness, further support is found through having faith in the Dharma process and a commitment to seeing clearly.
All of this preparatory work primes the mind to handle choices in territory that is completely new. As the path unfolds more deeply, we begin to have experiences outside of the usual range. We have insights that challenge some of the deeply held assumptions we have lived by. There are moments where nothing looks familiar, and yet a rapid, accurate response is required.
Having worked with expanding our choices earlier in our practice, we may be surprised and even awed by the mind’s ability to smoothly navigate through doorways we didn’t even know were there. It is certainly not our will making the choices, and just as certainly that the choices are happening due to prior practice.
Eventually the mind finds the door that is the “exit.” There is something outside the world of doors. Then there is always a path to get through any door, even if experience continues to involve some dukkha for a while longer. Knowing this brings great joy.
As we walk the Buddhist path, the variety of situations we will encounter increases. Much will be asked of our heart as we learn to let go, adapt, and find our way through many doors. One secret to practicing well is to find the joy in opening doors.
Test each door you encounter,
Its latches and hinges;
Look for lurches and lags
As it sways in and out.
Each door is a teacher
as you quietly attend.
Imagine opening or closing
To rising water or to a sunset,
To sirens or to laughter.
… Relearn each day
To open to what is.
-Nancy Corson Carter
Life brings us a series of encounters, with ourself, with others, with things in the world. How much dukkha we experience depends largely on how we meet these encounters – dukkha being the generic word for the stress, struggle, suffering, or unsatisfactoriness that can accompany experience. We could think of each encounter as a doorway to the next moment, our response shaping where the doorway leads.
We can meet life with obsession, grasping, resistance, confusion, and other fruitless approaches that literally feel heavy, sticky, or painful. There are also options that involve less or no dukkha. These could resemble flowing or dancing with a situation, showing clear strength without aggression, acting with tenderness or love, or simply standing in awareness and letting things unfold. We can’t always choose the best option, but Dharma practice helps tremendously in giving more options.
The doorways we meet in meditation are not so different from those in daily life. We encounter ongoing mindstates, thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Where they lead is linked to what we do with them. The range of possible responses is usually larger than we think. We are limited mostly by our own fixed views as well as by the strength of our awareness.
Consider a concrete example from daily life – a case involving people I know. One is a professor, an older American man, and the other is his grad student, a young woman from Korea. This situation happened a number of years ago, and the various responses are my own invention to illustrate the point.
These two folks found that they could not get through a door together. In the professor’s world, he should open the door for the woman. In the student’s world, she should open the door for the older man. Approaching a door together created a clash of incompatible customs.
What to do? Consider some options.
1. Each stands firm and refuses to budge. No one gets through the door.
2. It becomes a power struggle with one person “winning” and getting to keep their custom while the other one “loses” and has to change their preferred way. They get through the door, but someone is unhappy.
Clearly these two options involve nothing but dukkha. There are many better responses.
3. One person decides to do it the other’s way. Here, the motivation is important and could vary widely. The person could be doing this out of fear, disdain, pity, conceit, confusion, wanting to look good, wanting to connect, compassion, generosity, appreciation, or other possibilities (and maybe more than one at once). Maybe one is aware of these motivations, and maybe not.
4. They realize that their customs are incompatible and have an earnest conversation about that. Each explains why it is important and meaningful to do it the way they do. They end up feeling more connected to their own culture and to each other, and also have some sense of why others could think and act differently. They come to some mutual agreement about how they will go through doors such that both people’s ways are honored.
5. They see the arbitrariness of such customs and laugh together at the moment when they get stuck in front of a door. With full awareness, someone opens the door, they both get through, and later they can’t even recall who opened it for whom. Far into the future, they have a shared joke about doors. And they are each able to handle the odd door customs of yet other cultures that they encounter later.
6. In the moment of approaching a door, one or both people simply forget that they have a certain custom, and they get through the door without noticing it.
Which of these is best? Whichever one brings the least suffering in the moment.
This is a very mundane example, something any of us might encounter in our work, home, or community life. But these kinds of choices also occur in cushion practice.
Continuing with the simile of doors and customs for how to open them, the “customs” in our mind are the concepts and stories we tell about who we are, how we got here, what we are doing, and what will happen in the future – stories about our self. Like worldly customs, these mental customs are essentially arbitrary and sometimes incompatible. One story says that we are a capable person who got where we are because of our own mettle. Another says that our boss is the cause of our tension headaches. And a third one says that we have developed good sensitivity through being married to a person who needs our care. With all these in the background, we sit down to meditate, intending to focus on the breath.
Sitting in meditation, we come to many doors where we take the route of distraction or dullness, wanting or resisting, and sometimes we get hung up and cannot pass through, like the professor and his student. It is important to realize that there are many possibilities and to make a good choice.
Suppose there is a pain in your back during sitting. Do you allow your attention to be drawn there and then sit resisting the pain with clenched jaw, irritation, and thoughts about how it is ruining your peace? Other options include placing attention elsewhere; gently feeling into the pain with curiosity until its solidity dissolves; expanding awareness so that the pain is a small spot in a larger space of awareness; using the pain as an object of concentration; observing the mind that is sensing the pain; and doing inquiry around the present-moment attitude to pain.
More subtle experiences also include choice, although it may not be obvious at first. As we observe the mind, we can notice how quickly it flickers with feelings, intentions, and immediate responses to stimulation. But it can also return again and again to a single thought train, playing it out repeatedly and fruitlessly. It can be a bit confusing to see how the mind rapidly navigates by snap judgments and shortcuts, and yet is also subject to long monologues centered on “myself.” Where is the choice amidst all this habituated terrain?
Here is where the strength of attention matters. When the mind can stay calmly with experience as it gets stuck at a doorway, it can see how it is getting stuck and also see more choices. This is the most basic mindfulness instruction: Learn to observe a reaction instead of blindly playing it out. But it applies more subtly also. For instance, what happens at the end of the out-breath such that the mind slips away into thought? Or when I get drawn toward a memory, what am I believing about my self and what it is important to do at that moment? Stronger mindfulness helps. And beyond mindfulness, further support is found through having faith in the Dharma process and a commitment to seeing clearly.
All of this preparatory work primes the mind to handle choices in territory that is completely new. As the path unfolds more deeply, we begin to have experiences outside of the usual range. We have insights that challenge some of the deeply held assumptions we have lived by. There are moments where nothing looks familiar, and yet a rapid, accurate response is required.
Having worked with expanding our choices earlier in our practice, we may be surprised and even awed by the mind’s ability to smoothly navigate through doorways we didn’t even know were there. It is certainly not our will making the choices, and just as certainly that the choices are happening due to prior practice.
Eventually the mind finds the door that is the “exit.” There is something outside the world of doors. Then there is always a path to get through any door, even if experience continues to involve some dukkha for a while longer. Knowing this brings great joy.
As we walk the Buddhist path, the variety of situations we will encounter increases. Much will be asked of our heart as we learn to let go, adapt, and find our way through many doors. One secret to practicing well is to find the joy in opening doors.
Test each door you encounter,
Its latches and hinges;
Look for lurches and lags
As it sways in and out.
Each door is a teacher
as you quietly attend.
Imagine opening or closing
To rising water or to a sunset,
To sirens or to laughter.
… Relearn each day
To open to what is.
-Nancy Corson Carter