Start from Those Endings

We have to learn to open up to the world around us.

It’s one of the last things we do, actually. We normally have an unawakened relationship with the world around us. We pay attention to it just to manipulate it, to find things for ourselves in it. We even talk about living our life as if life is something separate from us. We try to get ‘on top of life’ or get ‘ahead in life’.

The world of nature is something we dominate; we don’t feel we’re part of it. Planet Earth is a place down there, and we walk around on top of it. We don’t feel that we’re part of the earth; it’s that stuff underneath us that we wander around on.

In meditation, you begin to see the results of this alienation. Eventually you become alienated from your own vitality, your own life. When there isn’t anything you can get out of meditation, when there isn’t anything you can manipulate about it and when any sense of vitality or relationship finishes, you have this dumb, numb, dull feeling.

Where has the joy gone? Where has the twinkle gone? I want happiness! Where has the happiness gone? You may think, ‘Meditation is supposed to make me feel happy and to transform me into a more kind and loving person … Well, I need to practise more loving-kindness, but where is it? I can’t find it. How can I practise it?’ You can’t feel anything.

We start learning from the world by learning to be with the negativity of our mind, with the dullness of it. We have to start from there, with those endings. Rather than trying to feel a positive feeling, we take the time to be with ourselves and we start to learn to feel.

When you concentrate and begin to witness the mind more fully, you see a strong aversion, which is the root of our alienation from things. We tend to reject so much of the world around us through fear, disinterest or dislike. If we can’t get something out of it, we’re not bothered with it. There is ignorance, dullness and unkindness; we don’t feel at one with it.

So we have to learn to feel at one with our emptiness, our dullness. We look into the resistance, the sullenness, the resentment: ‘I don’t want to put up with this!’ or the feeling sorry for ourselves: ‘Why is this happening to me? I’ve tried so hard for all this time, and I haven’t got anything out of it! Nobody loves me!’ – these sorts of childish sounds come and go in our mind. We come to a point where we decide that there’s nothing to get out of this at all.

This is the complete giving up, the complete letting go: not getting anything out of anything.

This reflection by Ajahn Sucitto is from the book, The Most Precious Gift, (pdf) pp. 62-63.