I Suffer and You Shall Too
In a perfect world, I would be writing this as a completely recovered person. In a perfect world, I would not fall into the thirteen percent of the adult American population suffering from anxiety. Yet, part of working with anxiety is learning that this is not a perfect world.
There is serenity that most people associate with spiritual practice. ‘He meditates, so he must be pretty calm and collected.’ I take that comment a step further and say that many people who take up spiritual practice approach them as the key to serenity. ‘I will meditate, resulting in my calm and collectedness.’ In reality, spiritual practices are often meant to work us up – to reroute the typical pattern of the mind which, in my opinion, is often the equivalent of ‘serenely tuning out’.
I knew the ropes fairly well. I had participated in retreats and upheld a daily practice and I knew that spiritual practice could calm a person in one way and churns up emotions in another. Thus, when I began to experience anxiety, my mind began to fear spiritual practice. My mind had become an anxiety mind, and it demanded my attention at every turn. Why would I want to sit on a cushion and practice Tonglen with anxiety mind? Anxiety mind ruminates and has a knack of filtering normal experience through a pessimistic lens. Sitting with anxiety mind, surely, would not bring about serenity. Surely, it would lead me closer to panic than peace.
Then, one day, I found myself thinking that if I (with all my bounty and blessings) was experiencing such intense anxiety that surely the anxiety of other beings with great suffering must be much more prolific. So, that became my practice. I would allow myself to tune into the feeling of anxiety in a full way, and then I would think of other beings and the myriad forms of sufferings they sustained. Then, I would think of their suffering. Nothing based on fact, just my assumptions of what it must be like to suffer from things like war, poverty, and disease. Through this practice, I came to think of my own anxiety as very misplaced. Surely, the suffering of others was more valid.
All of this went on fine and well until a Dharma friend called on the phone and let me explain the practice to him. ‘Isn’t that kind of denying yourself of your own experience?’ he asked. ‘And isn’t it kind of unfair to assume that just because someone is poverty stricken that they must also be miserable. What about happy poor people?’ Oh yeah! What about happy poor people? What about people with cancer who found joy in every day? What about my own suffering and my own happiness? And why was it made any more or less valid by the experiences of others?
My anxiety mind had turned the world into a hell pit. I had taken the knowledge that ‘all beings suffer’ and had turned myself into the poster child for some strange ‘Life is Strife!’ campaign. Thus, instead of working my way out of anxiety, I backed myself into it. I nestled into it through assuming that it was everywhere. Even my Tonglen practice became riddled with thoughts like ‘I inhale all the anxiety of everyone I met today and I breathe out non anxious energy and happiness!’ Again, the anxiety mind likes to ruminate, so the more it is thinking about anxiety the more anxiously appeased it becomes.
There truly is a moral to this story.
Our spiritual practices are not meant to deny us of our experience. However, they are also not designed to make us feel better for the sake of feeling better. My mixed up version of equanimity had brought everyone to the lowest common denominator of anxious suffering. Everyone in that worldview was the victim of horrible life situations and negative emotional states. It wasn’t because I wanted everyone to feel bad, but it was because I wanted Myself to feel good. I wanted that ‘calm and collected’ feeling, so if thinking about a few million people who were worse off than me could give me that feeling – well, then ‘let’s do it’!
But that is not the goal.
What I realized is that I had to claim my own experience. I could not mitigate or make my experience paramount by comparing it to the experience of others. More importantly, I was applying no true antidote via this practice. It was more like sending myself a daily greeting card that said ‘You’re life might suck, but somebody else would love to be you!’. And I only write this, because I think this might be a common experience. We are taught that all beings suffer, and that is an easy teaching to bend to our favour. ‘I hate my job, but hey, so does everyone!’ – ‘I am so unhealthy, but someone else has it worse off than me!’ – The truth of these thoughts does nothing for our own experience. What I have found that I have to tell myself is ‘I have suffering, and I have to find the antidotes.’ I can extend kindness to others, but I can not liberate them by knowing their suffering alone. I, surely, must also know the pathways out of suffering. In the same vein, my anxiety is not cured by quantifying the anxiety of others. Surely, I must apply the spiritual truths I have acquired and move away from my own experience of anxiety and then hope that I can develop the skillful means to help liberate others from their similar bondages.
Now that I have quit the practice of viewing my suffering as the lesser of the great sufferings of the world, I have also ceased to walk around assuming everyone else is miserable. That’s a much kinder view of the world. It’s not a perfect world, but it’s a kinder world.
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Very inspiring article, thanks. I really want to get down to meditating but wasn't able to find any good resources to help me. Can you recommend any good videos, books, websites to get me started?
Hi Elias.
Thubtenchodron.org is a wealth of great information (though I'm a bit biased).
For those suffering with anxiety and depression, WHEN THINGS FALL APART by Pema Chodron is a wonderful starting point. Her book START WHERE YOU ARE can get you started with the principles of Tonglen.
Hope that helps.
Dylan
Is this the Dylan who I heard about from Sravasti Abbey? If so, hey dude! I will read your article when I'm not supposed to be working
Hope you're well!
This is that Dylan, Alec. Small world – glad to see you here.
Terrific article! I love this:
I could not mitigate or make my experience paramount by comparing it to the experience of others. More importantly, I was applying no true antidote via this practice. It was more like sending myself a daily greeting card that said ‘You’re life might suck, but somebody else would love to be you!’
Time and again, we distract ourselves so much with so many things/thoughts because anxiety is just too painful to investigate. But, once the investigation begins, slowly but surely one experiences great relief – an "unloading", if you will.
I agree. It is quite painful to move in on anxiety. It's a hard thing to 'take to the cushion', but I think gentleness makes all the difference in the world.
Thanks for reading.
but I think gentleness makes all the difference in the world.
How true! I like your use of the word "gentle." Being gentle to oneself, being easy on oneself makes the investigation a lot smoother. On the other hand, in the absence of gentleness, one is prone to all kinds of affliction – "Why can't I get this right?", "I have been practicing for quite sometime; so, why is this hard so often?"
What was hard for me was to 'develop' intense anxiety in the midst of spiritual practice. Spiritual practice was not a reaction to anxiety – it was not a remedy. The practice was there and then my anxiety came about. So instead of 'Why can't I get this right?', I was running around 'What am I doing wrong?'.
Ah, a very subtle point/observation. Thanks for sharing!
Excellent read. Timely as I too am going through a period of anxiety.
I hope that you find relief from your anxiety – and a way to meet it with your practice. It is juicy ground for self discovery, that is for sure.