A few weeks ago, I was travelling back home by train. The journey was about 5 hours long and during the last of four different stretches the train started to fill up quickly. As people swarmed through the carriage looking for free seats, I was simultaneously trying to put upright a knocked over cup at my feet and pick up my day pack from the seat next to me with the intention to move it. A man stopped and indicated he’d like to sit in the seat. It was fairly obvious (to me) he thought I was reluctant to free up the seat and I told him in a slightly defensive tone that I was moving my bag.
I managed to get my bag on the floor between my knees and he sat down in the seat next to me. A simple and typical exchange on a crowded train you’d think. But I felt regret that I’d reacted, even though only slightly. It wasn’t really what I’d said, but how I’d said it. And I didn’t actually know if he’d been annoyed with me. Perhaps he was just a bit impatient. And anyway, what did it matter if he had assumed the worst – that I was one of those greedy passengers who want two seats while others have none! The atmosphere between us, these two strangers, felt a little sour. I tried to make eye contact, but he stared resolutely ahead. I wanted to say something, anything to lighten things up – but I could think of nothing.
I confessed this incident in a weekly meeting of practice friends, and after I’d described what had happened, I said that this particular area is a weak one for me. If I think I’ve been misunderstood, or my motives are misrepresented it stings. I don’t want to be seen in a way that’s stingier or meaner than I think I am. Or seen in a way that’s just wrong! I don’t like it. Maybe that’s fair enough, and this is probably true for many of us. The important thing is – what happens next? Does it end there? Or do we bite back? A third option which I think is a pretty common one is we manage not to say anything but we ruminate on what’s happened, and internally complain about the other persons attitude.
Sometimes, in certain situations, I’ll bite back. It’s a lose:lose response. It’s not nice for the other person and it’s uncomfortable for me. I usually feel bad that I’ve reacted. After I’d confessed this incident and the habitual nature of other moments like it, it got me thinking more about what happens during those times.
Life throws us moments where we’re misinterpreted or misunderstood. Someone picks up the wrong end of the stick about what we mean, and in a way that reflects badly on us. Or they do something that negatively impacts on us.
What do we do when that happens?
Why is it difficult at times to let it go? To let it roll off like water on a duck’s back?
One reason is that it is unpleasant, it hurts. It’s a moment of ‘dukkha’. When we feel judged or not seen for who we feel we are it is naturally unpleasant. When we’re mindful we’re able to ‘stay with’ what’s happening but our mindfulness is often not 360 degrees in the round. Because of our conditioning we all have sore spots, things that are more likely to trigger a reaction. For example, I find it painful and difficult to be ignored or forgotten about. I’m more likely to react in those circumstances even if mostly it stays as an internal reaction within my own mind.
Mindfulness has a lot in common with forbearance which Sangharakshita helpfully says is an aspect of patience. I think patience is a really beautiful quality with a lot of moral strength. Its opposite, impatience, is very self-absorbed, it’s all about what we want and wanting it now. In that moment we care very little about someone else’s reality. (Road rage is a dangerous example of this).
Forbearance is when we’re able to ‘stay with’ or even to ‘bear with’ the rush of uncomfortable sensations and feelings that can arise in the body and mind when things aren’t the way we want them to be. It is possible (and desirable) to be mindful of the inner tensions that can arise when the impatient mind wants to act or speak in a way that’s an expression of reactivity. Whether we react internally or not, we can train the mind to be with difficult experiences without reacting externally to others. We practice bearing our own ‘dukkha’ without spraying it around to others.
The Buddha takes forbearance to extremes with an analogy in a teaching called the ‘Simile of the Saw’. He says even if bandits were to saw you from limb to limb train yourselves in this way “Let my mind be unaffected, I will not speak out in anger”. In another teaching the Buddha exhorts a particular Bhikkhu to ‘”Bear it Monk” when he is being treated badly by some villagers who he has previously wronged. This is the power of the unreactive mind; the power of not retaliating to small or large provocations.
The third aspect of my confession was to do with a lack of mindfulness working with wisdom. This happens when we take what someone else does or says personally. Something is being said or implied about ‘me’ that I’m not happy with and I need to protect myself. What rears up in the moment of reactivity is the desire to protect that all important sense of self.
The combination of mindfulness, forbearance and patience, along with clear recognition of ‘dukkha’ is a powerful way to progress in practice and to bring about wisdom. It can be helpful to take this area as a specific focus in practice. After all, it’s in relation to other people we most often experience feelings such as hurt, disappointment or anger. It’s easy to rationalize such incidents where we react as minor and unimportant but we can see how the mind feels when we do fully acknowledge our own faults even if in the greater scheme of things they are small. We don’t leave that sourness that I experienced on the train.
By working with difficult feelings we perfume the world more beautifully as well as our own minds.
Uncontrived Mindfulness 