No Mud, No Lotus

That’s from the first chapter on “The Art of Transforming Suffering.”

Rule #1: You will never get to a point where you are completely happy and have no suffering. Period.

Our highs will be higher and our lows will be higher (which is A W E S O M E) but we will NEVER get rid of all the “lows.”

As Dan Millman says, there are NO enlightened beings—only more or less enlightened MOMENTS.

Thay tells us that as a young monk he used to think that the Buddha never suffered. But, he tells us that even the Buddha suffered. The Buddha had a body so, Thay tells us, he must have at least occasionally gotten a headache or a stomach ache. When he lost a friend he felt sadness. He was human. Therefore, he suffered. He just happened to be VERY good at recovering his equanimity.

Which reminds me of a story about Morihei Ueshiba (the founder of Aikido) Michael Gelb shares in The Art of Connection. Apparently, O-Sensei’s students thought he always remained perfectly centered. But that wasn’t the case.

On one occasion, Gelb tells us that a student “exclaimed to his teacher: ‘Your techniques are perfect! You never make any mistakes. You never lose your center!’ O-Sensei replied, ‘I lose my center frequently. I just find it again so quickly that you can’t see it.’”

What does that mean for us? It means that we can quit suffering our suffering. Nothing’s wrong with you. You’re human. Recognizing the fact that suffering goes with happiness is the first step toward transforming our suffering.

btw: Alan Watts once said that some things so naturally “go with” other things that we should have a new word: “goeswith” to capture that dynamic.

Light goeswith dark. Up goeswith down. Left goeswith right.

Suffering goeswith happiness.

P.S. I got that whole “Your highs will be higher and your lows will be higher” from Jose Silva and Burt Goldman’s The Silva Mind Control Method of Mental Dynamics where they say: “Unremitting happiness, of course, is not a possible—or desirable—state. According to the principle of rhythm, there is always an inflow and an outflow, an ebb tide and a flood tide. You’ll always have highs and lows— there’s no way to avoid that. However, your highs will be higher and your lows will be higher. And you’ll find that what is a depressive state for you might be a moderately happy state for someone unaware of the Five Rules of Happiness.”

Their 5 rules of happiness? “Five Rules: 1. If you like something, enjoy it. 2. If you don’t like something, avoid it. 3. If you don’t like something and can’t avoid it, change it. 4. If you can’t or choose not to [important distinction there!] avoid or change something you don’t like, then accept it. 5. You accept something by changing your perception of it.”

Imagine the beautiful lotus ponds at each of the Plum Village practice centers.

Smell the beautiful lotus flowers.

Now, smell the not-so-wonderful mud.

Then remember: No mud, no lotus.

All that reminds me of my last business. I named it Zaadz which was a play on the Dutch word for “seed.” I love the metaphorical power of a seed and had this As a Man Thinketh James Allen quote on our stationery: “The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”

All that’s nice and warm and fuzzy, eh? Well, when things didn’t quite go the way we planned, I liked to remind myself and our team that it takes some sh*t to make a seed grow. (Hah.)

Again: No mud, no lotus.

How about you? Looking to cultivate some beautiful lotus flowers in your life? Let’s remember to embrace that mud in which it’s growing. :)

Nothing survives without food.

The question is, what are you feeding yourself? Are you constantly chewing on the bad stuff or are you nourishing the good stuff?

In another one of his books called Silence, Thay puts it this way: “All the sounds around us and all the thoughts that we’re constantly replaying in our minds can be thought of as a kind of food. We’re familiar with edible food, the kind of food we physically chew and swallow. But that’s not the only kind of food we humans consume; it’s just one kind. What we read, our conversations, the shows we watch, the online games we play, and our worries, thoughts, and anxieties are all food. No wonder we often don’t have space in our consciousness for beauty and silence: we are constantly filling up on so many other kinds of food.”

Eckhart Tolle echoes this wisdom in The Power of Now where he tells us doing the same thing that makes you psychologically sick is kinda like eating stuff that makes you sick:“Once you realize that a certain kind of food makes you sick, would you carry on eating that food and keep asserting that it is okay to be sick?”

In The Magic of Thinking Big, David Schwartz uses another metaphor to bring the point home. He tells us:“Deposit only positive thoughts in your memory bank. Let’s face it squarely: everyone encounters plenty of unpleasant, embarrassing, and discouraging situations. But unsuccessful and successful people deal with these situations in directly opposite ways. Unsuccessful people take them to heart, so to speak. They dwell on the unpleasant situations, thereby giving them a good start in their memory. At night the unpleasant situation is the last thing they think about… Confident, successful people, on the other hand, ‘don’t give it another thought.’ Successful people specialize in putting positive thoughts into their memory bank.”

Let’s spit out the toxic stuff we’re ruminating on and apply that same mental energy to nourishing the best within us!

(What thoughts do you need to spit out? What should you be nibbling on more? :)

So, suffering arises. First thing to do?

Don’t run away from the pain. (And into whatever thing you do to numb yourself.) Instead, take a deep breath in. And a nice, long exhale.

Acknowledge that suffering is present. Then take another nice, deep breath.

Maybe name it to tame it before taking another nice, deep breath.

Then remember Vernon Howard’s brilliant wisdom: “Encourage yourself by remembering that any detection of negativity within you is a positive act, not a negative one. Awareness of your weakness and confusion makes you strong because conscious awareness is the bright light that destroys the darkness of negativity. Honest self-observation dissolves pains and pressures that formerly did their dreadful work in the darkness of unawareness. This is so important that I urge you to memorize and reflect upon the following summary: Detection of inner negativity is not a negative act, but a courageously positive act that makes you a new person.”

One more nice, deep breath.

Yep. Suffering may be there. But so is happiness. The lotus flower is blooming.

In our Nutrition Notes, I like to talk about the fact that our bodies are constantly renewing themselves and I love this fun and wise mystical approach to the cycles of death and birth.

Our most recent reference was in Susan Pierce Thompson’s Bright Line Eating where she tells us: “Every cell in your taste buds dies and is replaced by a brand-new taste bud cell every two weeks, so as you detox, your taste buds will be going through their own evolution, and in very short order your food will taste AMAZING.”

Did you notice those cells dying? What about the new ones being born?

Death. Birth. Death. Birth. Death Birth. Death. Birth. Death. Birth. Death. Birth.

The cycle repeats itself endlessly all day every day within our bodies. But we’re not even thinking about it and we’re certainly not trying to organize billions of funerals and billions of birthday parties all day every day. … Right?

So, what if we brought a little more of that perspective to the inevitable “deaths” and “births” in the rest of our lives?

That creative idea die? Yep. It happens. Oh! Look. Another one was just born. All day every day. In every aspect of our lives.

Let’s embrace the natural cycles and inherent impermanence of life and flow.

P.S. Reminds me of Nietzsche and Thus Spoke Zarathustra where he tells us: “Shedding one’s skin. The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. So do the spirits who are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be spirit.”

Then there’s Joseph Campbell’s epic: “If you want resurrection, you must have crucifixion.” And his playful: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking the eggs.”

The Two Arrows.

Quick recap: Get hit with the first arrow and it hurts. Get hit again in the same spot and it hurts TEN times as much! Moral of the story: Life will hit you with arrows. Don’t hit yourself with another one in the same exact spot!!

Reminds me of Kristin Neff’s wisdom from Self-Compassion where she tells us that Suffering = Pain x Resistance:“I once went on a meditation retreat with a wonderful teacher named Shinzen Young, who gave me words of wisdom that I’ll never forget. He said that the key to happiness was understanding that suffering is caused by resisting pain. We can’t avoid pain in life, he said, but we don’t necessarily have to suffer because of that pain… he chose to express these words of wisdom with an equation: ‘Suffering = Pain x Resistance.’ He then added, ‘Actually, it’s an exponential rather than a multiplicative relationship.’ His point was that we can distinguish between the normal pain of life—difficult emotions, physical discomfort, and so on—and actual suffering, which is the mental anguish caused by fighting against the fact that life is sometimes painful.”

Want to master the art of suffering well? Practice the Stoic Art of Acquiescence. Or Byron Katie’s Work of Loving What Is. Whatever you do: Quit shooting yourself with the second arrow.

P.S. Philosophical trivia time: Did you know that meditators and hopeful people can endure more physical pain? Yep. For example, they can keep their hand in buckets of ice water longer.

Well that’s interesting, isn’t it?

The Buddha became a Buddha (or awakened/enlightened one) and then he KEPT on meditating. Why? Because E V E R Y T H I N G is impermanent. Including the Buddha’s happiness. And definitely mine and yours. (Laughing.)

Good news: We just need to keep feeding our happiness. Which, of course, begs the question: What do YOU do that helps you stay plugged in and happy?

Thay shares the Buddhist practices but what are YOURS? Ultimately, it’s a simple two step process: 1. Know what works. 2. Do it. (Even after you’ve become enlightened. :)