The Clinging Mind

Here's something in the "no accidents" department: yesterday afternoon I was reading the articles about freedom by Ajahn Buddhadasa and Santikaro in the current issue of Inquiring Mind, reminding myself that true freedom is not what we so glibly talk about in our society, nor what our President seeks to promote in other parts of the world by making war. It's not about lacking nothing in the way of material confort, nor about the "freedom" to do whatever I want. True freedom, as the dharma teaches it, is the mind's freedom from both clinging and aversion. It's about separating the mind from "me" and what is "mine", and recognizing the delusion of being attached to material well-being.

Okay, there's the wisdom. I read it. I get it. So it seems. Then I drive over to our late-afternoon sangha (once a month, as I think I have mentioned before, Than Geoff comes up from the Metta Forest Monastery for a teaching session, and we meet in the afternoon rather than the morning) and park my new Toyota Prius outside our friend Eva's house. I arrive early purposely, knowing how crowded it's getting these days when Than Geoff comes, and find a seat. The bell announcing the start of the meditation hour sounds at precisely five o'clock... and by three minutes past I'm in a state of total panic. I'm convinced I forgot to take the key out of the car and lock it...

Now there's a silent hour ahead of me--not to mention a second hour of dharma talk--and my car is out there on the street, unlocked, with the key in place, ripe for the plucking by anyone who happens to walk past. I distinctly remember opening the windows on this hot day. Did I forget to close them, compounding the vulnerability...?

Breathe... bring the attention to the breath...

So I'm sitting here trying to meditate and by now my mind is in high gear. Not everyone knows how to start a Prius, even with the electronic key in hand. It's not an ignition key, and there's nowhere to insert it. And those who know about this idiosyncracy are already Prius owners, right? Noble people, conscious of the environment--surely not the kind of people who would steal a car. Even if I had left the car with the windows open and the key inside, no fellow Prius owner would act in so dastardly a fashion.

Uh-oh, forgot to breathe... I hear Than Geoff's injunction: bring the attention back to the breath...

Besides, there's not that much foot traffic on this street. How many people would be walking past to notice that my Prius was unlocked? Was this a likely area for car thieves? No. And even if someone did manage to steal the car, I'm insured, right? But... do insurance companies pay up, even in cases where it's demonstrably the owner's fault for having left the key in the car and the windows open?

It's a physical sensation now. I'm actually sweating with anxiety. My body is overheated with sheer panic. And the mind continues to race... Should I get up? Pick my way through the serried ranks of sitters, risk disturbing them, to check up on my car...? Maybe wait until the meditation hour is over, then slip out before the dharma talk starts? Would that be rude? Would I look foolish?

Breathe...

And then of course it dawns on me that this is precisely what I was reading about just a short time ago. What I'm actually experiencing, here and now, is a real-life demonstration of my own lack of freedom, my desperate clinging to a material possession because I think it's "mine" and I'm terrified that someone will take it from me. My car! My Prius! My new Prius! My ecologically-friendly machine, the very symbol of my advanced consciousness and my social responsibility! Time to get a grip on my hungry ghost! A car? What's a car? Just a heap of metal, really. Not me. Not mine...

Breathe... breathe...

Absurd, no? So what I now need to do, here in my sit, is to learn to let it go. Not mine. Just a thing. And wach the clinging mind refuse to stop chewing on it, like an untrained puppy.

Breathe... But what if...? Breathe.

I can report here that I did in fact get through the hour. The worst of the agony began to subside after the first twenty minutes or so. The anxiety died down a bit later. By the end of the sit I had managed to let it slip my mind and fully focus on the breath--aside from those moments when the mind took time out to congratulate itself for being so focused and attentive.

And then of course at the end of the sit, when movement was permitted once again, I reached down to pat my pocket and discovered that the car key had been there safely all along.

What a gift! Having read those two articles in Inquiring Mind, I had been alerted that very afternoon to the mind's inclination to cling--whether to pleasure or aversion--and here I was given a magnificently dramatized opportunity to watch it in action. I can't say that it was a particularly comfortable experience, but it was certainly a great teaching, and one that I won't very soon forget.