Seeds of Stress

We attempt to keep the action going in our lives. We try to keep our minds occupied and ahead of the emptiness that lurks just beneath the surface. This constant distraction is more important than all the money in the world, because it is not wealth we crave, but the feeling that we are real, that we are accomplishing, and that there is an underlying reality behind all of our activities. We long for the power of achievement, the realizing of a goal: “I am.” “I do,” “I accomplish.” These things reinforce the “I,” which then must be selfishly protected and defended, instilling stress and destroying any possibility of love.

When the action stops, perhaps by an accident or an illness, our past frenzied activities wash over us again and again, until we finally become quiet, laid bare to the emptiness. We have hidden from emptiness for a long time, pushing it aside, but the time will come when we have no choice but to face it.

At that time, our worldly minds become frightened, faced with the fact that nothing lasts and everything changes. Then, unable to find security, this insubstantiality causes stress, which intensifies when we discover that no fundamental reality can be found behind anything, including ourselves. What we have here are the three characteristics of material existence; impermanence, discontent, and no self, and why we cannot count on worldly things for our happiness. We can’t count on the world because worldly experiences are transient, always changing, and at some point they cause us stress when we are either separated from those we love, or cannot rid ourselves of those we dislike. In addition, no underlying reality exists in or behind any of this — everything is empty.

These things are not obvious to most people, yet we can’t understand why we are stressed out. Admittedly, seeing things as they really are is not easy because we are frightened of emptiness, and therefore our reaction is usually one of stress when we subconsciously are confronted by it. Sometimes we feel incomplete, lonely, and we try to fill a bottomless pit inside of ourselves with the people and things we love. If the love we feel for them is merely one dimensional, i.e.; we love this person but hate another, then this is not love at all, it is merely an attachment providing us with only a surface happiness and imagined security. This type of happiness is laden with underlying stress because this happiness always depends on other people and things, things beyond our ultimate control, and even though we might try to control them, we can’t. Control is never love since it is derived from fear, and as a result the people and things that we love sadly become soft, velvet ribbons that bind like iron chains around our necks.

Disappointments grow from seeds of expectation, and our expectations prove unrealistic regarding the staying power of surface happiness, the only happiness worldly existence offers. But there is a deep happiness, an eternal happiness that does not depend in any way upon external situations. It consists of unconditional, undirected love. Unfortunately, we cannot have both types of happiness. We must make a choice. If we choose the shallow happiness, it will be easily attained but easily lost. The deep happiness, if chosen, is difficult to attain, but can never be lost. It is our minds that achieve the surface happiness, which quickly disappears, but it is our intuitive hearts that contain our permanent happiness. All we need to do is open our hearts for it to appear.

Surface happiness comes and goes, no different than breathing in and breathing out. We cannot breathe in always, we must eventually breathe out. The deeper happiness, however, is constant. If we are continuously lost in surface happiness and the temporary pleasures it offers, how will we ever develop the necessary insight to delve into deeper happiness? Much wisdom is needed here because this deeper happiness will initially bore us as we lose touch with the stimulating surface things that have always made us provisionally happy, and we therefore ignore this deeper wisdom.

This is truly a great puzzle. How can it be that deeper happiness, initially boring as it is, ultimately frees us; and surface happiness, initially delightful, eventually binds us and is the root cause of our stress? No matter how much surface happiness we experience, it will eventually disappoint us, sometimes not until the very end, but a lifetime passes as quickly as a flash of lightening.

If, on the other hand, we work toward this deeper level of happiness, we will see through the transient surface of the world and eventually no longer find an interest there, just as we put away our toys as a child and grew into an adult. Now the allure of the world will not draw us into stress, and we will be released. Every spiritual advance requires a worldly sacrifice, this is simply how it is.

We might see ourselves, and our family and friends as permanent, joy producing, real — the exact opposite of the three characteristics — that things are transient, full of discontent, and absent of any underlying reality. If we truly understood this, then our family would be a delight to us, a real freedom, not something that we are dependent upon for our happiness. For if our family disappeared, what would happen to our happiness? Deep inside we realize these things, and stress results.

In our present state of mind, we may not be convinced that someday we will be able to see beyond our narrow attachments to family and friends, but if we could see beyond these attachments only one time, our love would become universal in nature. It would provide a fulfilling experience regarding our family because our worry and stress of losing them would be gone, freeing us from the impending pain that will inevitably come at the end when we are separated from our loved ones. We might assume that the deeper happiness will somehow be an abandonment of our family, but in truth, it is a divine embrace.

If a woman we know of had some problems with her husband, suspicious of his indiscretions, she would most likely become frightened. She would be threatened with losing everything, and her expectations and the security of their relationship would be in danger of being devastated. Rather than risk this, she might initially shut off the truth, closing her ears to the gossip because she would not want to face the situation.

Her only choices at this point would be to either take the easy way out, that is to ignore her suspicions entirely and let that little niggle of uncertainty eat away at her, or get to the bottom of the problem which would require extraordinary courage, because she could lose everything. This woman was suspicious that her husband was deceiving her, not unlike our suspicions that the world is deceiving us, but she was afraid to investigate deeply into the matter. She had a comfortable life that she did not want to disrupt. Similarly, we feel that happiness will be ours too if we can just find that perfect situation, and when we think we have discovered the ideal circumstance, we believe it will never change and that it will last forever. If the woman investigated and discovered the truth concerning her husband’s cheating, she would be forced to give up the perception of their wonderful relationship, and everything would undoubtedly fall apart.

This woman would have to make a painful decision, and more than likely she would confront her husband. Why would she face him rather than ignore his alleged indiscretions and keep her comfortable life intact? It’s because the stress was too great not knowing, and she had to know for sure.

If we are to relieve our stress once and for all, we must know for sure. And the only way to know for sure is to plainly see the false. Within the false images of life we create are the seeds of stress, and only when we can see clearly is the stress ended.

To begin seeing clearly requires a calm mind, a mind not caught up in the dramas of life that torture us so. If we are serious about ending our stress, we must put down all of the books and close our ears to all of the advice, and just sit quietly every evening and watch our minds. This in itself will free us.

Copyright © E. Raymond Rock 2007. All rights reserved

Article Source: http://www.content.onlypunjab.com

E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center (SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com). His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers (AYearToEnlightenment.com).

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated