Gratitude for Life’s Difficulties
With Thanksgiving coming up, many of us are considering the many areas of our lives or people we are thankful for. It’s easy for me to be grateful for my wonderful posse of peeps, who continually support my interests and struggles in life, my ever loyal pooch, who never rejects me and showers me with affection, my children and family, my health for the most part, the water and food I have a plenty. A person would have to have a brick for a heart not to be thankful for those things.
This year I am still grateful for the richness and fullness of my life, but I am shifting my focus to have gratitude for the difficulties that come my way, for the people who push my buttons, make me angry, or cause other unpleasant emotions to arise. Recently, I have begun to truly understand why the Dalai Lama says, “Our perceived enemies are our greatest teachers.”
Most of all I am grateful this year for the Dharma, the practice that has taught me mindfulness, which has allowed me to finally sit with uncomfortable emotions, for a practice that has allowed me the space and peace to see the processes that are at work when I’m feeling attacked, resentful, angry, or hurt. This practice has taught me that there is no bad experience, there is no wonderful experience, and I’ve gotten glimpses into what equanimity feels like. More often, I see where I’m attached, and how that attachment is creating suffering on top of what is already a difficult situation. In letting go, I’ve experienced release, peace.
So, now, as I reread the letter from the IRS for the umpteenth time, I am mindful to the insecurities that arise, my attachments to money, and I see the way I am projecting into the future. I see the indignation arise, and I look for where I can apply compassion, first to myself, and then to this situation, to the IRS. Little by little, I see the underlying issues, where I am creating more suffering for myself, where I am wasting precious energy, where my habitual circular thinking begins, and where I can exit from.
We all have people in our lives who know how to push our buttons, who know how to instantly trigger resentment and anger, frustration or sorrow. Yet, mindfulness allows me to take a giant step back, get beneath the flurry of thoughts that want to justify the anger through harsh judgments. I see how this strong sense of self rushes in to build an invisible wall between the other person and myself.
Again, I look for where I can call upon compassion, for myself first, and then for the other person. I let go of the meaningless judgments that are making me feel smug and above it all. I let go of the anger, which creates so much physical distress, which agitates my poor mind that wants nothing but to be able to rest awhile. And then out of the letting go, a place of calm fills the space, resolution arises authentically, a healthy compromise perhaps, or new point of focus.
Little by little, I am discovering equanimity in many kinds of situations, with many types of people, and in many types of emotions. In sitting with sadness recently, I discovered that there are actually pleasure points at that time within the body. Who’d have thought! In just being with the emotion of sadness, I let the army of thoughts march on by, and on its own, the sadness simply dissolved. It returned not long later, triggered by a thought of the past, and so I sat again, allowing myself to be immersed in the emotion, without buying into the story, a story that was but a memory of a memory, having no place in the now. Again, the sadness dissolved, the pleasure points in the body receded, and there was only the breath, in, out, in, out. And then it just didn’t matter any more. Occasionally the thoughts of the past situation arise, and I see it as an old habit that is going to take time to die away. I release the memory, the thoughts that want to revive it, and the sadness over that situation no longer arises. Soon, the memory will knock no more.
There was a day when I could not allow myself to experience painful emotions, let alone sit with them so deeply. I am truly grateful to the Buddha for the wonderful legacy of teachings he left behind. I am grateful for this practice that is allowing me to experience life to it’s fullest, no matter how I initially judge the experience, and I am grateful that I live in an area where I can get regular teachings and practice with others who also on are on this path.
And I am grateful to whatever and whoever life brings because it is through experience that I discover more and more what I am not, as well as what I can be.
