Lately I have been reading a series of books by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun. Chodron came to Buddhism later in her life. Like me, she often found herself suffering from chaotic and disordered emotions. The intensity of these emotions was often highly distressing to her, overwhelming her already raw and sensitive psyche. She yearned for something solid to hold onto- something to ground her emotions- but any sense of long-lasting solidity continued to elude her. Buddhism helped Chodron make peace with the ultimate groundlessness of life and provided her with a much needed framework for accepting, and ultimately shrinking, the power of her emotions.
The particular Chodron teaching I have been working on this month is restraint. Restraint not in the pejorative sense of repression or shutting down (survival tools I have unintentionally relied on far too often) but in the healthy sense of taking a deep, intentional pause. The first aspect of restraint is to understand and respect the power of emotions and how, unharnessed, they will run us around in circles. Understanding and respecting their power allows us to see how we increase our pain and confusion, how we bring undue harm to ourselves and others, by yielding blindly to our emotions. Restraint asks that we approach our emotions with mindfulness. It asks that we look directly at our emotions as they arise so that we don’t create a reckless chain reaction whereby our emotions grow from minute to expansive. We learn to become bigger than our emotions. We leave things minute. We keep them tiny. We learn to pause. Pausing allows us to stop impulsively repeating the same reactions over and over and over again. Pausing requires a great deal of practice and attention because we are programmed by Western social norms to fill up space rather than silently sit within it. We are taught to move on.
I was fortunate to have a grandparent who lived to be over 100. As she neared the end of her life she told me that the most important piece of advice she could offer me was to “not be ruled by your emotions.” My Grandmother had witnessed some of my more explosive and unruly emotions, especially as a teenager, and I recognized in her advice genuine concern for the reactive way she saw me respond to life. In that moment, I believe she saw a warning light hanging above me. I believe she saw that I might be in trouble with life if I didn’t find an anchor in something larger than my emotions.
Untamed emotions can cause extreme harm to the human psyche. We can live with only so much untethered rawness before it is no longer pleasurable or desirable to be here in our bodies, tied to earthly life. When my emotions become too chaotic I find myself wanting to disappear, to evaporate. In a real sense, I start to wish to die. The physical world feels frightening and ugly and filled with harm. My thoughts and feelings become unwelcome intruders intent on separating me from loved ones and from life. Self-hatred rolls over me like a two-ton tank until I start to imagine ways out. Restraint asks me to recognize this as the signal that it is time for a serious pause. A life saving pause. It is time to take deep breaths and remember the teachings of restraint.
This week I have been reading the following teaching from Chodron’s wonderful book When Things Fall Apart.
Well being of mind is like a lake without ripples. When the lake has no ripples, everything in the lake can be seen. When the water is all churned up, nothing can be seen. The still lake without ripples is an image of our minds at ease, so full of unlimited friendliness for all the junk at the bottom of the lake that we don’t feel the need to churn up the waters just to avoid looking at what’s there.
Most all my life I have unintentionally given my emotions the power to run wild, to churn up the lake. Doing so has caused me untold hours, months, and years of loneliness and sadness. I don’t want to continue spending part of my life wishing I wasn’t here. It is far too painful a feeling. I want to take the reins of my emotions. I want to transform the rough sea in my mind so that, instead of dangerous, choppy waters, I encounter a still and peaceful lake. I want to be, as Pema Chodron says, a warrior of restraint. I want to want to be.
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