Insight into suffering and desire (and bagels)

At breakfast today, I feel like I had an important insight into desire and suffering. I had two bagel-halves on my plate, one toasted with cinnamon and the other untoasted with jam. I decided not to toast both halves because I enjoyed the smell of the warm bagel dough, and wanted to have that taste experience. But as it turned out, I definitely preferred the toasted one.

What I had been wrestling with is this principle that dukka inheres in every thing - good things, bad things, whatever things, they all have dukka in their nature. I experienced this with the bagels. The more I enjoyed the toasted bagel, the more I wouldn’t enjoy the non-toasted bagel. So the enjoyment of the toasted one itself contained dukka in it. When I was finished eating, I paused to enjoy the feeling of a full stomach, but realized immediately that in that enjoyment, there is an implied denigration of the empty stomach. In short, it seems you can’t have one-sided equanimity.

This is very troubling to me, on a number of levels. Admittedly, as a proviso, it’s new; there’s definitely a hope-desire that I’ve got it wrong somehow. But. First, it seems to undermine the middle way of the middle way – enjoy life’s pleasures but don’t cling. Because any enjoyment seems to imply a certain degree of desire. Is it possible to fully enjoy, with gusto and delight, the toasted bagel? It seems inevitable that the mere enjoyment, not just some special ‘clinging enjoyment’ or ‘belief that this will bring happiness,’ affects the equanimity. Because we’re kidding ourselves - equanimity means equal. If it’s not equal, then it may be partial equanimity (and that may be enough, as developed below) but it’s not full.

Second, if there is indeed a choice between liberation and enjoyment of life, it’s a very unhappy one. I should feel happiness at arriving at an insight on the way to liberation, but I feel sad. I feel sad because I still believe, or cling to the belief, that life is a gift and is meant to be enjoyed. Put another way (this was going to be the ‘third’ point but it’s really just a religious restatement of the second), I have a belief that God created the world - not in the naive sense but in a valuing-what-is sense - and it is basically up to us to make the most of it. Whatever that means - balancing eros and ethos, whatever. But I feel like the path that gives me happiness and peace of mind is one which tastes the fruit, appreciates it as much as possible (without getting tight about as-much-as-possible and without any belief that this delight will somehow endure or provide lasting happiness), and then thanks God in abundant gratitude for borei pri ha-etz. My blessings feel pretty soulless and empty (and not in the positive Buddhist senses of those words, although maybe, actually) if I have no enjoyment of what I’m blessing over.

Now, this is to some extent the point. When God gives lousy, stale bread, it’s still incumbent on us (from the religious pov) to thank and to bless. How do we do that if we’re so busy comparing it, in a negative way, to the lovely toasted bagel. (In fairness to the untoasted bagel, it was not lousy... I liked it fine, just not as much.) And how do we avoid comparing if, when we have the toasted bagel, we’re savoring every bite.

This is depressing. Honestly, I want to be enlightened, but I don’t want to be someone who no longer enjoys sex, food, wine, music because it’s just a transitory pleasure that contains within it dukka. Steve’s story about not liking the Dead show after a two week retreat is, to me, a failure of practice. Even though I recognize that it is probably a success of practice in an objective light. When I went to the Roxy a week after finishing the 2 week retreat (was it just last January? yes, I think so), I had an amazing time. The music, the lights, the sexuality, the pot, and then later the sex with the lithe guy I met there – these were not only super-enjoyable because I was sensitive, they were spiritual in the best sense of the word. Sex with God, dancing with God - it was vivid, alive, real.

I feel like I was doing fine before this retreat and before this insight. I don’t mean that bitterly, or with a sense of regret, just: I feel like I had a good balance going already. There were areas that definitely needed work - anger, lovingkindness, equanimity in terms of things like politics and career - and I’ve worked on all of these and much more. But in terms of desire, I don’t know. I would like to masturbate less. I would like to waste less time, particularly late at night - mainly so that I can work more, which may itself be a problematic attachment, but also, if I waste less time messing around, I can spend more time doing actually enjoyable stuff. So, I don’t know.

I get the matrix, and I get the translation of the matrix into Jewish language. Jewishly, to be with God always means to affirm every experience. Not necessarily be joyful or find every experience pleasurable, but to recognize that it is what God is giving you at this moment. That requires a deep equanimity, as well as a strong mindfulness practice so you can see clearly when you’re balance is disturbed.

Resolution? Well, I can think of three. The first and probably best is Sharon’s metaphor of “leaning back a little.” The reality is, as soon as the pleasures really start coming back in life, of course I’m going to desire them and enjoy them. But maybe with a little less zeal, or sense of importance. That still makes me sad - I love enjoying things with a sense of zeal. Zest for life, lust for life. But, it’s true that I tend to get actually sad sometimes when I eat really lousy food, and certainly when I haven’t had sex in a while. You know, I keep using food and sex as if this is only about sensual pleasures, but it’s not - it includes writing right now, which I take enjoyment in, or seeing a good movie, or having a spiritual experience. I mean, surely there’s something greatly awry when a really good davening is greeted not with hitlahavut but with total hishtavut - meh, okay, a good high, but I’m not getting attached because it is transitory.

It just doesn’t sit right.

Two other possible responses. One is Hamid’s Sufi delight in life. The Sufis seem to have a way, that the Buddhists don’t or don’t emphasize, in really enjoying, deeply and rapturously, the delights of the world, seeing them as being from God, and yet also seeing the shadow stuff as being from God. I’m surprised that book (“The Last Barrier”) has actually made such an impression on me, since I didn’t like it much when I was reading it. But, you know, he’s singing during the harrowing drive on the side of the cliff because he knows - knows, not believes - that this is from Allah also. He has that knowledge because his peak experiences and his meditation and confrontation with shadow have all given him first-hand knowledge and deep insight into this truth. Yet Hamid does not practice equanimity in the sense of detachment. I think he’d really enjoy the toasted bagel, but then recognize that the non-toasted bagel, too, is from Allah.

The third possible response is one I’m associating with Adyashanti - enlightenment is about deeply knowing that you’re God. Liberation comes with it, but we can focus on the Zen/nondual part first, and then let the liberation flow from there. After all, if you are abiding in primordial peace, why care about the bagel anyway? The whole point of the bagel is to bring you a kind of happiness (let’s say it’s a deep kind, even), and if you’ve already got the deepest, or a deeper, happiness, what’s the point. It’s at best coals to Newcastle, only it’s worse because it includes an aspect of preference and thus dukka.

I recognize this last point intellectually, but again it seems like something has gone off the rails.

I’d kind of like to restate the Adyashanti point, which, and this may have nothing to do with Adyashanti himself, could be stated as: don’t worry about it, don’t focus on it. I’m upset about this issue because I feel like I can’t get enlightened as long as I enjoy the toasted bagel in a robust way. And I do want to get enlightened, or realize my already-enlightened nature in a deeper way. I do realize it in a shallow way - a little more than merely intellectual, but it could be deeper. But maybe it really doesn’t matter as much, this stuff with the bagel. We could place our emphasis elsewhere, and let the desire piece sort itself out as it will.

Let’s also see how all this is related to a lot more than bagels. I perceive, how to phrase it, one of my least skillful attributes as being the difficulty I have making decisions. There’s a lot written about this above already, so I won’t rehash. The point of it is, I really have a lot of desire around all of the various alternatives. Being somehow politically powerful is so appealing, so much desire. Being a spiritual teacher. Spending a life under God’s wings. Making three million dollars. Publishing books. Saving swaths of nature. I mean, these are all quality things, to varying extents - I’m not talking about bagels or nice highs. And there is, truthfully, a ton of desire around each of them. That makes making a decision, i.e. giving one of them up, very difficult.

If I didn’t have as much desire around these objects of desire, then giving them up would be easier. And not regretting the path not taken. Indeed, maybe I would’ve been happier as a law professor than as an itinerant cheder teacher. It seems pretty plausible. But whatever is, is from God. Or, put back in Buddhist language, clinging to one means aversion to the other means denying the present means suffering. And I do suffer when I relinquish something real. I can tell stories when I’m relinquishing a mere sense-pleasure, and bandy it around, and come to some peace. But when I’m relinquishing something that seems close to my personal dharma... that’s where the real tightness is.

It even applies to writing now. I have a fear that writing this much, on so many days, really sets me back and keeps me from some sort of deeper or more stable silence. I have another voice that says don’t worry, that’s not true, and anyway this is your path, etc. For the sake of argument let’s say the first voice is correct. If so, there’s a choice to be made: deeper silence, or the value in recording these insights and thoughts. Both have value. Period. But, a choice needs to be made. See how my mind really wants not to make that decision. It leaps to the second voice. But what if the first voice is correct? And, it is definitely true that writing is more pleasurable than staring at the wall and wanting to write. (Staring at the wall in samadhi, on the other hand, is pretty pleasurable.)

Yesterday, right before I did some writing, I was doing walking meditation. And I just felt a desire, that’s clearly what it was. A pulling desire, taking me to my room to write. It was a noble desire. It is a desire that creates great stuff, and spreads wisdom - the essay is good and is going to be very good. But, see that it is, nonetheless, a desire. And by acting on that desire, I deny an opportunity to watch and be with it and really be equanimous between acting on it and not acting on it.

I mean, there is no way that I could say I am equanimous on that dyad. No way. Being a writer is “who I am.” Ha - so interesting. Just because the who I am is nobler than being an investment broker, I feel like it’s ok to indulge that identity. Maybe it is, but see that feeling, let’s not deny what it is - a clinging to a sense of identity bound up in producing good writing. Even if we don’t go into the psychological story (why isn’t it good enough just to be, who am I trying to impress, etc etc), see how this particular desire runs very deep and very close to a sense of self.

All this from the two bagels.

Now, it really is time to stop writing and begin the meditation day.