The Threshold of Restlessness
El Umbral de la Inquietud
A student describes a growing sense of unrest during meditation, and the teacher explores how the restlessness of identification can be met directly rather than avoided.
The Threshold of Restlessness
A student describes a growing sense of unrest during meditation, and the teacher explores how the restlessness of identification can be met directly rather than avoided.
Following up on what you mentioned about fundamental dissatisfaction: I've been noticing it more, though I would call it more like a constant unrest. In the meditation, at one point you were talking about doing nothing, how everything appears, the thoughts appear, the intentions appear, the sensations happen by themselves. I think I believed you for a while, because I started feeling this unrest increasing in intensity. It was like, "Wait, if everything is happening by itself and there's nothing I can do, no thought I control, then how am I going to solve this thing that needs to change, that needs to be better?" It felt like a pain that started increasing. So I'm curious about that.
Just like that. You're describing the natural process we've been talking about.
The restlessness at the root
The restlessness has many different names in different traditions. In the term dukkha, from the Sanskrit (somebody might correct me, and it doesn't matter), it is translated as "dissatisfaction," but in another part of Buddhism there is a translation that renders it as "restless mind." There is a map in one of the vast parts of Buddhism where the deepest thing, the last thing that is seen through, is the cause of restlessness.
The threshold is this: you believe yourself to be something that is not truly what you are, and that doesn't feel good. It fundamentally does not feel good, specifically because you believe yourself to be something that comes and goes. We believe ourselves to be the body-mind. Not only the body, which is the first attachment, but the mind: the thinking, the process of thinking about myself. There is a constant thought process of "I, I, I," imagining a world, imagining my life, past, future, and "I, I, I."
The circle that won't hold still
Think of a meditation from a few weeks ago where I was suggesting: think of a circle. A circle is a very fixed thing, a mathematical construct. You can represent it as an image or a formula. But if you try to hold the image of a circle still in your mind, it takes a lot of effort, and it's going to be a constantly shifting experience. It is very unstable.
That is the sense of self. This "I" here, "me here, not there." The words I'm using aren't really how it happens; we're not thinking that way. But that is the mechanism. And because it's like the circle, it's not stable. It is impermanent. In Buddhism they also say everything is co-dependently arising, which means nothing has its own origin. Everything arises based on conditions. So there is this moving, shifting, changing.
Once this starts to be seen more and more deeply, the restlessness becomes more and more present, more and more conscious, because it is always present. It becomes more felt, more in the skin, because you are trying to maintain this circle of "I" and you start to see how hard it is to keep it going, how much effort it takes.
The fear at the edge
What is going to happen is the sense of "me" ending: fear of death. "If I am not this, then what am I?" The unknown has no guarantees. All that I could hopefully ever be of value is, like others, as some form of living evidence that there is something on the other side of that fear barrier, on the other side of that threshold. When we come up to that, at least how it was for me, my whole body and mind was screaming, "Do not go there. Do not look there. Anything but there." When I was far away, I had the thoughts and beliefs like, "All I want is to go there." The second I was close: anything but that.
Maybe it's related to what you're saying. It's as if I believe less and less the ideas that come up about what will solve that restlessness.
Yes. That's key.
I just have no idea what will solve it, really. Or I know that the typical things won't solve it. I just don't know the direction for solving it.
The direction is understanding the cause.
You mean, what am I believing that I am, that I'm not? I don't know what to do, really.
Well, yes and no. You are doing this work.
Yes, but in the sense of what I was feeling in the meditation.
Knowing and what is known
Everything appears. Everything happens by itself. That which knows what's appearing, that which knows this, that which is seeing something, that which knows the sensations, that which knows sounds, that which knows thoughts, that which knows the experience of the body, that which knows you.
If that requires sensations, thoughts, sounds, sight: does the knowing depend on what's appearing? Can there be knowing without anything appearing? Can there be knowing without anything known?
I have these thoughts that everybody I know, or I've heard of, who has realized what you're talking about has been in certain contexts, doing a retreat or something like that.
That's a really fun belief.
I know. I see its ridiculousness a bit, but I just wanted to express it.
Then why are you choosing to believe it? There's a very strong attachment to the belief that the conditions you need are conditions you don't have.
Right.
The trap of hope and the postponed future
That's perfect. And what is that going to do? It's going to create hope. It creates the duality of hope and despair. "I don't have that. I can't. Not right now. But hopefully later, if only I could work toward that future, then it would become possible." It's kicking the ball down the road of thought, the timeline of the mind.
You're saying look at this all the time, like now.
Yes, always now. You can only look at it now. Or you could decide to look at it tomorrow, and then you will never do it, because there's always going to be a "later."
It's helpful to express the silly thoughts, to humble oneself a little bit.
The humility is a consequence, but the objective is to see things as they are. Then we become humble.
That was helpful. Thanks.
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It feels scary. It really is the big deal, and it brings up so much. But hearing people speak is extremely helpful. People are able to articulate things that I can almost follow and relate to. It's just at the edge of my grasp. One thought that came up: when I compare the experience of looking at sensations, looking at perceptions, or just allowing perceptions to be and noticing the pull to be someone, to be the subject, it's like trying to climb a greased wall. I can't get a handle on anything. But then I had this thought: when I interact in the world, when things are happening through action, through experience of thought, emotion, events, perceived events, then I can see, "Oh, it looks like there's a person here doing all this," but it's easier to see that it's just happening. It seems like maybe it's easier to get a sense of what you're talking about when I think of events, because they unfold through time. I don't know if that's helpful or true, but there's something fundamentally easier about it. I can see that I felt a certain way yesterday but today I feel differently, or I had a judgment about something and now it's not here. So it's all in constant motion. But the perceptions feel different. I can't even put a word to it. There's something about it that feels beyond my ability to relate to.
Taste it fully, don't push it away
What matters here is that this could tend to point toward trying not to be a certain way, trying not to be identified. That never works.
What works is to look really, really directly at what's right in front of you, at what this experience is. In a sense, it's almost the opposite. Let the sense of subject appear. Let the identification happen. Don't fight it. Look at it directly, intimately, closely, not thinking about it.
If you want to know the taste of an apple, do you take a very small bite and then start taking notes? Or do you hold it in your hand, close your eyes (because it's taste, not seeing), slowly bite it, chew it, and spend several minutes completely in the experience of eating the apple? Then later you could write a book about it.
Now consider that the opposite is the restlessness, the pain, the fear, the sense of contraction, the sense of self, the experience of identification, the experience of getting pulled into thought. It's not about pushing thought away and trying not to get pulled into thought. That's just never going to work. It's the opposite: let the thinking happen, let the pulling into thought happen, and bite into it. Taste it fully, fearlessly. A lot of it doesn't taste sweet and delicious at first. A lot of it is, as I say, an acquired taste.
You said something earlier about how the closer you get to it, the more you want to run away, and the farther you are from it, the more you want to go toward it. I think that's an underlying experience I'm not usually aware of. That is a really good pointer for me, for tasting. I can see how much I don't want to taste. So now: taste how much I don't want to taste. It's incremental, or something?
Yes, good.
It's not baby steps, but just: don't skip anything. Don't skip any flavor. Don't skip any aspect of this. That's the message I'm getting from you.
The mechanism of avoidance
Yes, because if I were to say it very bluntly and generally, the whole process of identification is all about avoiding what is here. It's all about some form of dissociation so that we don't fully taste everything that is happening. It's a form of numbing, of withdrawing and dissociating from reality, which is impossible. So what it does is create a chaotic functioning.
The antidote can be described in different ways. The self-inquiry process is one way, but it can also be described as: work on tasting everything that's happening that you're avoiding. But not mindlessly. Also look at what is its origin. That restlessness, for example: don't just take it as "I'm going to torture myself to feel restless now." Look at what is its nature. Why is it happening? What is it that is restless? Who is it that is restless? There is something causing it. But if you avoid the restlessness, if you obey all the mental strategies that say, "Go there, to the future where there will be no restlessness once you get to that place," that's not going to work.
It almost feels like it fuses the journey and the goal, because as that tasting is happening, that's it. There's nothing more. And throughout this whole meditation, I was trying to get somewhere. It's just the opposite of what you were saying. But I can see how this mind wants to flip it all into something to reach, somewhere to get to. Yet again the same pattern: somewhere to reach, something to get.
What lies on the other side
The illusion is that I am something I'm imagining, which, because of that, will end. Therefore: fear of death, fear of ending, because I am believing that I am something that exists in my imagination. I need to keep that imagination going, therefore in time, to keep it going. And now there's this deep restlessness, because that's just not a restful thing.
At the same time, because of this push, this inscribing, contracting, imagining, and believing something that I'm not, there is dissatisfaction. And all of this keeps the mechanism going: time, time, time, future, future, based on strategies from the past, from what I've learned, and so on. Now the key is: if that which I am in a sense running away from, which is here, can be tasted fully, then that whole mechanism is unnecessary.
The key is the evidence coming from people who have gone through that transition, who can say emphatically: there is something on the other side.
What do you mean, "there is something on the other side"?
On the other side, meaning: you can come up to that threshold where you will feel you end. It feels like you're going to die. I emphatically say it feels like the body-mind experiences the activation of avoiding death. All of the fight, flight, all of the body-mind responses of facing death. It feels like that. And tasting those pains and those fears, the pains that we're avoiding feeling all the time, the fears that we're avoiding facing all the time, we can cross that threshold.
I'm here mostly as an example, one of several, of those who have gone through that transition and can say there is something on the other side, and it is a lot better.
That was an understatement, but I understand you don't want to get too sensational.
And then it's really up to you in the end. It's up to you to explore. There's no rush. It's in your own time.
That's beautiful to hear. I can see all the conditionings, the "get your act together, turn it around, fix it, correct it, do it now." These things are so subtle, and I'm not usually aware of them. But as I hear you speak, they're rebelling. It's helpful to become aware of what's underlying, the underpinnings. In this moment, it's helpful.
You're welcome.