My Fear, My Shame, My Choice
December 10, 2008 The following is an edited version of a recent group discussion:
Andrea: In the recorded talk we listened to today, you spoke of shame. When I am criticized and feel guilt or shame, even though I can consciously say all the right things, there is still a being inside me looking for a hole to crawl into. So when it comes to guilt or shame, I find that it’s a tremendous exercise to be able to not recoil from that feeling. For me, this is much more difficult to deal with than anger.
Ven. Wuling: First, I think a good number of people feeli like you do. When anger flares up, we may find it easier to calm down than to to eliminate the guilt over having become angry. But as difficult as it is to work with shame, it is good to feel it when we have done something wrong because then we will feel badly. Frankly, unless we feel badly, we will keep repeating our mistakes without any qualms. But the risk is that we will hold on to the shame and become so caught up in it that we can no longer function. And because all we want to do is look for that hole to hide in, we can’t be mindful. That leads us to make more mistakes, and so we keep perpetuating this cycle.
This is when we need to use the compassion that we feel for others and try to feel that same compassion for ourselves. Although our goal is to awaken and become a perfect being, at this point in time we are very far from perfection. We need to keep reminding ourselves how to act. Once we have realized our wrongdoings, we then can decide how to not to repeat them. But we need to stop going over and over unfortunate situations or else we’ll just keep planting more seeds for shame, or anger, in the future.
So we need to gently pull our mind away from what has happened and redirect it to what we are doing right now. We use our ability to concentrate our thoughts on what we choose to rather then allow our mind to wander willy-nilly. We can use the same techniques for managing our thoughts of mind-numbing shame that we use to manage our anger or other destructive emotions.
Andrea: Like fear! Fear can be an underlying emotion to anger or shame. And something like fear can be much more insidious than anger. It has a different energy. Without detection, it can drain us. And while we know we shouldn’t return to our anger, there is some sense that we should return to our shame, to explore it by going over and over it until it threatens to drown us. And all the while we think we’re doing the right thing.
So to realize that our way of always having done this is neither helpful nor healing is very important. To hear you say “don’t panic” but instead look at where we are, see what needs correcting, and then move the mind back to a calm awareness is so powerful for me. In the past when I moved my mind elsewhere, a voice would pop up and say “No, you’re trying to escape.” Then I feel guilty about having tried to escape!
Ven. Wuling: What we need to do is learn from our mistakes. Then we try to return to a sense of calm, an awareness of what is happening in this moment. An awareness of our thoughts and actions. Doing this, we will be aware of when fear starts to creep in because fear is the handmaiden of many destructive emotions. And as you said, it is more sinister and is often less noticeable. And as each of us knows, fear can immobilize us.
When the Buddha spoke about the three kinds of giving, he spoke of the giving of fearlessness. So fear is a major problem for us. Fear can arise because we do not want to lose something tangible, something outside us. Or it can be fear of losing something within us. We may fear the loss of “myself,” a carefully crafted concept of whom I am.
We don’t yet understand there really isn’t anything to fear. Fear of losing a possession? If I am supposed to have something and it is taken from me, it will come back to me. Or another will replace it. Fear of losing a loved one? The sad reality is that we will eventually be separated from all those we love. Fear of aging and illness? They are a natural part of living. Trying to delay or avoid them is trying to hold off what comes to all those who live.
Andrea: It feels like to take in new ideas to our cup, if you will, we have to first empty what is already in it. But if fear is present, we also feel diminished. And now we are expected to empty our cup of what feels familiar. So this results in more fear.
Ven. Wuling: I think it’s so difficult to let go of what is already in our cup because no matter how unhelpful and damaging it is, it is still what is in our cup. And so it is very difficult to empty the cup until we are confident that what we will put in instead is truly better.
David: It requires trust. Or faith. And it can no longer be merely a concept. This brings us to what we heard in today’s talk on Changing Destiny. We are not hopelessly trapped by our karmas created in our past lifetimes for we can change what we destined. We do so by doing good deeds, by taking charge of our lives, and acting with wisdom. Is this too simplistic?
Ven. Wuling: Well, it is very simple. We have a choice. While we are here due to the force of our karma and we cannot change our past, we can change how it impacts out future through what we do in the present. It depends on how well we are able to focus on what we are thinking, saying, and doing.
In Changing Destiny, Yuan Liaofan had gradually stopped worrying or even thinking about things. So he excelled at reducing his wandering thoughts. He had developed the ability to direct his thoughts. We are still struggling to do this.
He also focused on good deeds. We can also ask ourselves what can I do right now to help others. And if nothing presents itself, then I can at least determine how to not do anything bad. How can I not create any more problems? If I’m not with anyone, what can I do to have good thoughts, not harmful ones?
We can pull our mind away from anything disruptive or negative or harmful to us or to other people or beings. We have the choice. Initially, redirecting our thoughts is really tough because our mind says “well that was all well and good but I want to go back to where I was because it’s comfortable there. And easy.” So we have to gently pull it away again and say “That may be true but it’s not where I choose to be.”
So it is very simple. It is to do nothing that is bad, to do everything that is good, and to purify the mind.
But this is so difficult to do because we have so many bad habits. Even high-level bodhisattvas still have habits. They have learned not to act on them, but the habit remains. So we can see how difficult it is to break our habits. We need a toolbox of ways to pull us away from harmful karmas and return us to good ones.
Jean: And we need to know the combination to the lock on the toolbox!
Ven. Wuling: The combination is very simple: t-h-e-c-a-l-m-m-i-n-d. When we calm the mind, the Buddha-nature that is already within us, that has all the answers within it, has everything we need within it, can arise and function. We will find all we need inside each of us. But first, we need to calm the mind.
Imagine you’re looking into a pool of murky water, which you are throwing rocks into. It’s so muddy, you can’t see the bottom. But when you stop stirring up the water and allow it to become calm and clear, you can see all those wonderful tools lying at the bottom of the pool. All we need to do is reach in and pluck one out. But we have to calm the pool—the mind—to see which one we’ll use in this situation and which one we’ll use in another.
Andrea: I’m sitting here thinking about guilt and shame and have realized how deeply implanted in us is the myth of the garden of Eden, of Adam and Eve being cast out of the garden.
This Buddhist teaching speaks of what is most deep, what is whole. At my very deepest, I have not been cast out of the garden, but rather at the deepest part of my being is the concept of God or Christ or Buddha-nature. I think the personal terror of annihilation is that somehow at the very deepest we are lost and somehow we have to add something to our unworthiness. But to know the deepest part is intrinsically good and whole is totally transformative.
Jean: Yes! It makes perfect sense. It took me a long time to accept that the Buddha-nature was always within me. That these feelings that when I was a “bad girl” my Buddha-nature would dissolve and that I was totally bad all the way through were wrong. To know that I carry and can be in touch with the Buddha-nature is a wonderful security. It dissipates much of my fear. And it makes it easier to be good!
Ven. Wuling: I think part of the reason we do not want to examine what we do is that we are afraid of what we will find. That if we look very deeply, we will find something truly frightening, something that we are not going to like. So to avoid looking, we frantically rush around doing things so we’re too busy to have the time to do what we know we should. And so we waste our time, our lives. And we fail to realize that deep within is our own Buddha-nature.
Andrea: This is extraordinary because this is more than asking what sins, what things can I correct. There is something here deeper than discovering that I am actually more hostile than I had thought. It’s a fear of being irredeemably defective or perhaps just unable to be effective.
Ven. Wuling: Flawed, cast out of the garden for a good reason.
Andrea: That’s what I think many hold in their hearts.
Ven. Wuling: And so, afraid of what we suspect we might find, we haven’t looked. We have spent our time and energy on all the wrong things.
But now we have the combination. Now we can make different choices. We can choose to let go of fear and to change from within.