“The Simple Life”, etc. (361-365)
361. The Simple Life
When we see life clearly, we understand that it is very simple. But there are two obstacles that stand in the way of seeing clearly: our tendency to be distracted by the details and the difficulty of seeing the whole picture.
We see so much complexity in the world around us that we naturally begin to think our lives must also be complicated. We identify particular problems that plague us and we narrow our attention in an attempt to solve them. We believe that by solving all of these little problems, we will eventually arrive at a better life. We can imagine this better life and we desperately want to get there. But we are easily distracted because we become attached not only to our desires and aversions but also to the vast network of beliefs that allow us to be functional members of our society.
If we saw how our attachments produce enormous suffering for ourselves and others, then we would never allow this to happen. But seeing this is far from easy. It is not as simple as understanding a few things about how attachment and suffering work in general terms. We have to see how our attachments operate in our own experience and how our reactions to the suffering attachment produces cause our problems and our suffering to multiply.
When we can see these things clearly in every moment of experience, all of the complexity of life washes away. Liberation from attachment means that our attention is now free, which means we can see what is truly needed and necessary for the first time. To act from compassion is to do what is needed and necessary, not just for ourselves but for all of the others that we now understand are part of us.
When all of our actions originate in compassion, life is incredibly simple and straightforward. We do what is most needed and necessary in this and every moment, and by doing so, we create joy for ourselves and the people around us.
362. So Much Suffering
As our awareness expands, we begin to pay more attention to suffering. We see that there is suffering everywhere, not just in ourselves and the people we’re close to, but also in complete strangers.
Through attention to the suffering of others, we begin to feel more of what others feel. We experience not only our own suffering but also the suffering of other people through empathy. To feel overwhelmed by this experience is entirely normal. There is so much suffering and seemingly so little we can do to stop it.
But we need not surrender to despair. We can instead recognize that our awareness is still relatively narrow, which means the compassion we can muster is also relatively small. It’s not that we don’t want to be more compassionate, but rather that we first must see what is necessary and needed in order to be able to take more meaningful action.
Often our compassion will be so small that the only place we can meet need is in ourselves. This is far from a bad thing. The more compassion we receive (including from ourselves) the more we will be able to develop our awareness. With greater awareness, we’ll be able to see more and do more. Then our compassion will spill outside ourselves and towards the needs of others.
We might wonder where our compassion should be directed when there is so much need around us. But this worry arises because we think compassion can be misdirected, and this is never really the case. As long as we listen to the intuitions that arise from our awareness of need, we will act purposefully to do whatever is most needed and necessary.
Every act of compassion has immeasurable value, for it creates a cycle of greater awareness, compassion, and joy in ourselves and others. As our awareness expands, we begin to contend with suffering on a larger scale. Sometimes these efforts will unearth attachments that we didn’t know we had, which will in turn produce new suffering for us. For this reason, we cannot limit ourselves to addressing the suffering of others. We must also always offer our attention to our own suffering so that our compassion can continue to grow.
363. In Order To Live
I’m tired of your nonsense. You keep giving me reasons why you can’t when I already know you can. You have the ability. You can’t keep pretending that you don’t. You keep saying that it’s too much, that you don’t know where to start, that you can’t figure out how to do it. But none of that is true.
You could start today but you don’t. You could at least figure out what your first step might be, but you don’t even do that. Yes, yes, you have all these concerns that you can’t ignore. About how you don’t have time. About how you need to focus on other things. About how it’ll never work anyway. Somehow you have time to think of excuses but none to actually do something.
I need to see you do. I need to see you take an actual step. At least one. Don’t give me reasons. I don’t want to hear any more flimsy reasons. I don’t want reasons. I don’t want words. I don’t want anything to do with language. Language can’t fix anything. I need action. I need movement. Real movement. And that means you have to change.
I know you hate change, but you can’t keep going like this forever. You’re stuck in the mud and you can’t stay that way. I won’t allow it. You have to change in order to be the person you must be. In order to live. That’s what living is. Changing once and then again. Changing without end.
You can’t keep being distracted. By all these words. By all these reasons. By all these little desires you have for this and that, for some imaginary future. Everything is calling for your action, right at this moment. It’s not just me. The whole planet is calling for you, out of desperate need. I know you can hear it. And I know you can hear me.
You, the one I’m talking to. Hear me right now. I need to see you do.
364. Truth And Fiction
When you’re reading a work of fiction, you might encounter something that doesn’t seem right. It could be anything, but suppose it’s the reaction of a particular character to a terrible discovery. The reaction reported in the story doesn’t feel plausible to you because you know you would never react in that way.
But allowing for the fact that the person in the story is not you, you might be willing to accept that they could respond quite differently than you would. You would let go of the discrepancy and continue reading. You know that since this is a work of fiction, you shouldn’t expect absolute realism from everything you find in it. Even if the implausibilities continued to stack up, you might press on, accepting that the world of the story is just different from the world you live in.
Despite these seemingly obvious falsehoods, there is something else in the story that feels valuable to you. Perhaps it’s just that the story is entertaining, but often there is something more than this as well. While the characters and events have been entirely fabricated by the author, you can detect truth at the heart of the story.
Even for the most realistic story, events in reality would never happen for you exactly as the author describes them. The same situation could play out in ten or twenty different ways, and only one of these is the one depicted in the story. Regardless, fiction still manages to reveal truths about actual life and the experience of being human.
If you can lean into these truths and allow yourself to explore them, then you are more likely to benefit from them. While the tale you’re being told is probably not how things will go for you, there is still an incredible bounty to be gained from those aspects of the work that are imbued with truth.
365. Bad Habits
A habit can form quietly and easily get out of hand. I’m acting in a way that I know I shouldn’t, but it seems to happen without choice. I know I can’t go on like this. I can’t keep harming myself by allowing the habitual behaviour to continue. I’ve already decided to stop, but despite my efforts to control myself, there is no change.
I’m trying to hold myself to my decision, and I’m frustrated by my inability to take control. I desperately want to prevent the habit from continuing. I feel like I should be able to do this just by imposing control over my actions. But this doesn’t work because my habit is already a form of control.
I haven’t noticed this because I’ve associated control with conscious choice, but not every instance of control follows from choice. Attempts at control are often reactions to the many kinds of suffering that arise from attachment. It’s because I’m suffering that my actions are repeating in this narrow and specific direction. My bad habit arose as a reaction to anxiety: it is the action I take to try to control that anxiety.
But suffering cannot be overcome through control. My habit will never leave me if I just keep trying to force myself to stop. Instead, I need to become looser and more free than I already am. I need to allow my attention to fully explore my habit and its causes. When I’m able to see the anxiety that provokes the habitual behaviour, then I will also begin to see the precursors of that suffering.
Without investigating my habit as a reaction to suffering, I won’t be able to resolve it at the root, which is attachment itself. It is only by seeing the nature of my habit and the attachment that causes it — not just intellectually, but in my actual experience — that I can hope to free myself from it. Once the attachment is loosened, the anxiety that follows from it will depart, and so will the habit that was merely a reaction to that suffering.