Difficult to see, very subtle, latching onto whatever it covets –
a wise one protects the heart. A guarded heart brings happiness.
– Dhammapada, verse 36. Translated by Christopher J. Ash
Where human life is, there will be difficulties of one sort and another. They can be little – today, for instance, I am unwell; but it’s probably no big deal. And, it might be. So, how do I keep an appropriate relationship with my condition? Or, the difficulty could be huge – someone we love suddenly and unexpectedly dies. Again, now to be related to it?
So, we encounter a great range of difficulties; yet, for a spiritual practitioner, it is important to protect the mind from despair, at all times; to not let despair stay too long, and block the heart. Despair blocks the heart from feeling a great range of healthy responses to our situations – including sorrow at the tragedies we encounter.
Yet, we don’t want to struggle with despair, either. Despair will come, sometime, and we can acknowledge it. We can even empathetically feel our way into its roots, if there’s sufficient support, inner or outer. However, most of all, we needn’t fall into it, or follow it. It needs to be able to pass through us.
When we keep in touch with our bodily knowing, the body can find a way forward. It may not be evident now, but there will be a way, at some level of our relationship with the difficulties. Sometimes, it might not be a way which alters a difficulty, or which alters it much. My Chronic Fatigue is an example. But the way forward might come in the heart’s relationship to the difficulty.
How can we know, when despair knocks on the door, that there will be a way forward? Again, because the body has its own knowing, based in its inherence in, its belonging to, its participation in, its indwelling in the big life process, the ‘This’ which exceeds our library-shelf knowing. One thing the body ‘knows’ is that not initially knowing what the way forward will be, that is not a difficulty, that is a part of the way forward. Not knowing is the space in which we can listen for intimations of the way forward.
The problem for us, though, is that – especially in the early stages of the spiritual way – despair has leapt into our mentality, our speech, and our body, before we know it. Once recognized though, it is important to study it, and then let it go. Because, like all things, it will go. This is the way of taming the demons.
Difficult to keep in check, frivolous, latching onto whatever it covets –
it is wonderful to tame the heart. A tamed heart brings happiness.
– Dhammapada, verse
35. Translated by Christopher J. Ash
To tame the demon of despair, we need to get a relationship with it. If we are identified with it, we can’t see it for what it is. If we suppress it, or avoid it in some way – play yet another DVD, for instance – we won’t see it for what it is, that way, either. The middle way is neither to suppress it, nor to indulge it. Breathing in, and out: “Hello, despair. I know you’re here.” I can imagine the Nikāya Buddha saying, “Oh, hello Māra, it’s you! Come on in.” Thich Nhat Hanh had a lovely story about that. He tells it – one version of it – here.
I like the version in his Heart of Understanding, and retold in Soul Food: Stories to Nourish the Spirit and the Heart, by Jack Kornfield and Christina Feldman. Someone has put that on the web, here.
Ānanda, in the story, is not yet awakened like his teacher, and so is worried about Māra. But the Buddha’s relationship is free of fear. Mara, it appears to me, doesn’t know what to do with that. It’s difficult work, as a seeker, to protect oneself. It’s hard to tame the demons. But, it’s of the nature of the mind that it is possible, because the mind creative, relational present exceeds its old patterns.
Does this story give you a good feel for a playful spirit with which we can approach the work at hand?
One is one’s own lord protector.
What other protector could there be?
With oneself well-tamed,
one gains a protector hard to find.
– Dhammapada, verse
160. Translated by Christopher J. Ash