GO TO THE EDGE

Go to the edge.

Go to the edge of your practice, the place where you begin to lose attention or you begin to be consumed by reactivity. That is where all questions come from, whether you know it or not.

Ken McLeod

Unfettered Mind

Newsletter, 7/7/20

He's talking about questions for a teacher, how you find them, and how you ask them. Out of a number of suggestions on Ken's list, this is the one that caught my attention and provoked a radical disturbance in my mind. So I should pay attention.

I have followed a meditation practice for more than 20 years. I have allowed my views and my way of life to be profoundly influenced and guided by the wisdom of the dharma. And yet I have resisted the further step of embracing Buddhism whole-heartedly. I have attended retreats, not only with Ken but also with other venerable teachers, Shinzen Young and Thanissaro Bhikkhu, and yet I have acknowledged no one as my "teacher" in the Buddhist sense--even though I understand this to be an important step for anyone who wishes to progress with a serious meditation practice.

I recall receiving an inquiry Ken put out many years ago, asking what people expected in their relationship with a teacher. I gave the matter a good deal of thought. What I discovered in some dark recess of my mind was a fundamental resistance to the whole notion of a "teacher"--which I took to mean submitting myself to someone claiming greater knowledge, greater wisdom than I could find within myself. My association with teachers took me back to childhood days, a time when I learned fear, resentment and distrust of the men (mostly) who lorded it over me in the classroom. To be a boy in boarding school required submission. It was enforced. And when I was about 12 years of age, I was invited to a sleepover at the home of one of them, who summoned me to his bed in the night and abused my boy's body to gratify his sexual needs. And, meekly, I submitted.

But that was 70 years ago. I have nothing now to fear from a teacher other than the unprofitable reopening of those ancient wounds. It would be dishonest to use them to justify my resistance even at my current advanced age. Yet I resist. I resist the call of Buddhism, and explain the resistance away on the basis of some ancient, cliche'ed prejudice against "organized religion." Brought up the son of a Christian minister and schooled in a tradition from which I separated as soon as I reached an age where I could question my father's faith, I developed an intellectual antipathy to religions of all kinds. I learned nothing but disdain for their patriarchal moralism, their intolerance, their dogmatism. Mistaking my intellectual arrogance for sound judgment, I basked in such assumptions without much questioning or doubt. 

Venturing further into the murk, I suspect there is another, more disturbing aspect to my rejection--one so deeply mired in shame and denial that it's hard to contemplate, let alone to write about. It is an aspect of my character that I have long deplored but has proved impervious to change. I'd like to find a nicer word for it, but the simple, honest one is: laziness. (In the articulation of those old Seven Deadly Sins, it's Sloth). For me, it takes the form of a tendency to take the course of least resistance (there's an irony!) in all my undertakings. I choose not to make the effort, when there is effort to be made. It is enabled, surely, in part, by the fact that things have come to me so easily--jobs (in the days when I had them) or freedom from employment (I have not had one in more than 30 years), relative financial security, relationships, a modicum of professional success. I was gifted with a certain easy "English" charm, an unassailable social position, one of the best educations available anywhere in the world, a learned command of language, even an accent that appeals pleasantly to the ear. All of which, despite the obstacles and heartaches no human is spared, has eased the progress through my life. 

So this is the edge, the place where I begin to lose attention and begin to be consumed, in Ken's formulation, by reactivity. The reactive pattern is the retreat from effort when things get difficult or challenging, a capitulation to the familiar distractions of the mind. It's a good place to rest in contemplation and begin to start afresh.