Sadness and the broken heart (dharma al regel echad)

I just spent the early morning summarizing the core teachings of my book "The Gate of Sadness" for a book proposal. I even re-subtitled the book, which is great. Having to teach the Jewish-Buddhist dharma al regel echad was a great challenge. Like doing a school application, but for enlightenment school. Ha. Here's what I wrote.

The fundamental principle is that everything is God. In non-theistic language, this means that all phenomena are empty of true separateness. As Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, there is cloud in every piece of paper, because without the cloud there would be no rain to grow the trees that produced the paper. Likewise, the paper “contains” the logger, the mill, the sun – in fact there is nothing in the paper that is not dependent upon something else. Nor will the paper exist forever; eventually it will return to its true reality, which is non-existence. And this is true, of course, for all of the elements that made up the paper; it is not that the cloud, sun, or logger is more real.
So what is the paper? It is a temporary ripple on the ocean of God. We treat the various forms of condensed energy (‘matter’) as if they are separate things, but only the laws of nature bind together our molecules and atoms in such a way as to keep us distinct from everything around us. And, of course, those laws will eventually provide for our dissolution. Of course, it is easy to imagine a paper being empty of separateness. To conceive this truth regarding oneself is much more difficult, and probably impossible without a contemplative practice to quiet the mind.
The reason for this is that the mind is very active. It is a beautifully assembled tool that ensures the propagation and blossoming of humanity, and we use it so often that most of us actually identify “ourselves” with our minds. The mind thinks temporally, dualistically, conceptually, and allows us to do amazing things. But when the mind is busy working, it is blocking the experience of “right now,” and replacing it with all sorts of thoughts about the past and future.
It is also desiring. If we pay close attention, we can notice that the mind either wants or doesn’t want almost everything it encounters. Objects in a room, people we meet – we immediately and without noticing attach an attractive or aversive label (or both) to them. Some things we just mildly want – ice cream. Others we want a great deal – food when we are hungry, toys and technology. And others we want so much that we suffer intensely when they are denied us.
It is possible, with contemplative practice, to see all of these phenomena and know that they are true. It is almost never possible to do so without such practice – the words on this page are merely concepts: map, not territory. However, by slowing down the mind and watching it, it is possible to relax into a state of being where desire is much less strong, and the world can be seen as it really is, rather than as an mass of concepts, desires, and fears. A great calm can be experienced, and great realizations are allowed. The separate self is seen to be an illusion. You are God, in this moment – just this moment, nothing special about it – and there is no inside or outside to your consciousness. It is not that “you” are God with super powers, of course, or infallibility. You are God the same way a leaf is God as it “knows” how to unfold and grow. That is the type of “knowing” which is primordial awareness, the ground of all reality.
Few of us live in the blessed state of always remembering the true ground of reality. Some of us, though, are on a path that occasionally leads us to realizations of our “always-already” state of enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something that is achieved. It is not something separate from the world, a happy land where all is white and angels play harps. It is simply being fully present in the “Now,” accepting whatever is unfolding at this moment as the unfolding of the God process.
Along that path, sadness, sorrow, heartbreak, and pain still appear, just as they always do. For whatever reason, many people believe enlightenment to be a soporifically happy state of bliss. Now, bliss is very pleasant, and it, like mind-states of rapture and joy, can be experienced on the contemplative path. I have experienced them. But they are not the path itself, and are not the fruition of the path. They are manifestations of God – and so is sadness.
If we push away sadness and try only to think happy thoughts, we are denying God, denigrating our own experience of the world, and getting carried away by our desire. (Yes, getting carried away with desire, etc., is also God in this moment – but the point is to realize that this moment is God, and to do that one must be skillful.) I am feeling sad, therefore I must not be enlightened. I am unhappy, therefore my peak experience last week must not be real.
The Gate of Sadness is a sustained and gentle “No” to these upsetting and incorrect ideas. It draws on contemporary teachers, Biblical tales, ancient wisdom, and Kabbalistic secrets to show that, in fact, your sadness (or happiness, or even boredom) is not something to be pushed away, but is something to be embraced. Not because we should dwell in the stories of our sadness – that often may just make us more sad. Rather, because we can experience the physical state of sadness in the present, and watch it eventually pass. Precisely because we thought it was so powerful, and so permanent, this realization can be profoundly self-transforming. Sadness is God too. It’s not just okay to feel sad – it is holy to feel sad, if that is what is happening now.
Once more, this is very different from wallowing in grief. When we wallow, what we are doing is replaying the story of our grief – the death of a loved one, our failures in life. The Gate of Sadness invites us not to do that, but instead to simply experience the grief or pain as a flavor of the mind that is being tasted at this moment. Just the feeling of it – not the reasons or the story. I can say from experience that it becomes just another feeling, just another flavor. And when that transformation occurs, the most gorgeous, precious joy washes over you, a joy that does not negate sadness but exists right alongside it. It is a taste of enlightenment and, for those who do experience sorrow, a liberation whose value cannot be expressed.