If the Buddha Got Stuck_ A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path - Charlotte Sophia Kasl [16]
Thich Nhat Hanh writes in The Diamond That Cuts Through Illusion, “Words and concepts are rigid and motionless, but reality is a steadily flowing stream. It is impossible to contain a living reality in a rigid framework.” Thus, to be alive is to drop whatever creates a rigid framework, and accept the ever-changing flow of life.
Form Is Emptiness, Emptiness Is Form
In Buddhism we learn to notice our attachments and our internal experience of breathing, tension, and relaxation, while we see how our lives are set against the backdrop of all creation, remembering that our thoughts, bodies, minds, objects, and air around us are all made of one energy. Specifically, form is emptiness and emptiness is form. Everything rises and falls from one source, one energy. This helps us remember that while we are studiously working to finish a project, arguing with our mate, or upset because we gained ten pounds, the earth continues to spin around the sun, gravity is keeping our feet on the ground, animals are hunting for food, rivers are running, clouds are gathering moisture, and people all over the world are having their own struggles, sometimes similar to ours, and often much more challenging, and it’s all part of one energy.
Buddhism is about becoming one with the flow of life—we enter a river with its rocks and riffles, its boulders, log jams, and smooth waters. Sometimes we feel calm in the center of the storm: I remember when my sister was dying, she wanted none of our tears. She wanted us to laugh together, reveal our long-buried secrets, and have us circle her hospital bed singing, “You Are My Sunshine.” Other times lightning strikes: we lose our grounding and feel shaken and changed. The God of our childhood collapses, our lover leaves, the work that sustained us no longer satisfies.
But from a bigger perspective, we remember it’s all part of one journey—our personal journey and that of all people. Whatever we experience, others are cycling through the same emotions and struggles—albeit with different rhythms, settings, and costumes. As we will explore, peacefulness comes when we tap into the knowledge that we are all bound together by a field of consciousness that permeates everything.
Imagine the teachings of the Buddha like the ringing of a bell. Let them vibrate, touch you, or be a guide, but do not grab hold of them as the ultimate knowledge. It is often said that the teachings provide the raft to take you across the river, but as you land on the opposite shore the raft comes apart and you find yourself walking on your own—eyes and heart open—experiencing the immensity and wonder of life.
6. Am I Stuck or Am I Floundering: What’s the Difference?
I recently spoke with my niece Alissa. “I’m really stuck,” she said with a laugh. “I’m sick of teaching in a private high school for boys, but I don’t know what else I want to do. I think of going back to school or changing jobs, but nothing excites me. I hear people who’ve had this job for twenty years making the same complaints I make after one year. I want to say, ‘If you don’t like it, do something different.’ I don’t want to be here in twenty years with the same complaints they have.”
I laughed. “You’re not stuck,” I told her. “You’re just floundering. You’d be stuck if you were rationalizing your unhappiness and saying there was nothing you could do. But you’re out there looking and exploring, and most of all you believe it’s possible to be happier.” Alissa’s willingness to know and feel her unhappiness and to be casting about for something better is a mark of unstuck thinking. She may not know what she wants—we often don’t—but she knows this isn’t it. That’s the first step.
There is a paradox about attachment that often comes up in spiritual circles. One might say that Alissa is attached to her job being different. Does that