119 - Brightening the Mind: Refusing to be Tyrannized by Negative States

This episode is a Dharma Talk about how practice can help us “brighten the mind” when we’re feeling trapped in negativity, hopelessness, despair, discouragement, depression, lack of confidence, etc. We practice four steps: 1) Acknowledging (noticing and admitting how we’re feeling); 2) Taking some time to fully experience whatever it is we’re feeling, without trying to change it; 3) Exploring what’s going on within us, gently and non-judgmentally, and 4) Engaging in an activity, like zazen, you know is calming and restorative.

Quicklinks to Content:
Three Typical Responses to Negative States
A Personal Story about Feeling Under a Cloud
A Journey Back to the Light
Four Steps to Freeing Ourselves from Negative States
Step One: Recognize, or Acknowledge, Our Experience
Step Two: Allow Ourselves Time to Experience Negative States
Step Three: Investigate, or Explore, Our Experience More Deeply
Step Four: Nurturing and Non-Identification

Three Typical Responses to Negative States

Most of the time, when we’re feeling discouraged or upset, we do one of three things. First, we may look around outside, to see what we can do or change in order to feel better. What strategies can we apply? What new efforts can we make? What demands should we place on the world so our needs can be met? The second approach we may take is to try to argue with our own feelings, making a case to ourselves why it is we shouldn’t be upset, or how we should just snap out of it. The third approach, if you can call it an “approach,” is to basically give up and wallow in our negativity.

Sometimes the first two responses to feeling discouraged – making changes in our lives or in the world, and arguing ourselves into a more positive outlook – may actually work. But often, despite our external or internal efforts, we remain trapped in a depressed or agitated state. Our minds can get stuck in endless rumination about how to fix or improve our situation so we’ll feel more hopeful and positive, but our challenges still seem overwhelming. Or, despite all of our very reasonable and rational attempts to argue ourselves out of our feelings, we remain under a cloud.

Fortunately, the crux of the Buddha’s teachings is that you can change the state of your own mind without depending on your external conditions to change. In other words, you can brighten your body-mind even if nothing in your life, or in the world, becomes objectively more hopeful or positive. However, you can’t do it merely by arguing with yourself. At least, you usually can’t brighten your mind through sheer force of will, and if you can, the fix is probably temporary or superficial. Instead, employing practice to cultivate a more positive state of mind involves a few steps, and takes some patience and reflection. The rewards of this work can include a renewed sense of possibility, empowerment, and determination.

A Personal Story about Feeling Under a Cloud

To illustrate the practice of “brightening the body-mind,” I want to share with you a personal story about some things I have struggled with lately, and how I needed to apply the medicine of practice in order to improve my state of mind. It’s tricky sharing personal stories of struggle, sometimes, because even when you’re a “Dharma teacher,” people sometimes respond by taking a “one-up” position as they offer you advice, or express sympathy for your obvious weakness. I don’t know about you, but that makes me want to stop being honest about my difficulties. I make myself share anyway, because I also want to avoid getting caught in simply defending my ego. Still, I try to instill in my Sangha a practice of bearing witness to other people’s hard times with respect by trying to truly understand what the person is experiencing, without judgment, and with a deep faith that the other person will find their own way through difficulty by relying on their practice. In other words, I’ll share, but I’m doing fine, so no need for advice or condolences!

In any case, I went through a bit of a funk recently, brought on by various things in my life. My beloved dogs are getting older, and their minor health problems are becoming a regular part of our lives together. When I exclaimed to my vet about my little dog, “But she’s only seven!” The vet said nothing, but gave me a gentle, compassionate look, like, “Oh, these cute dog owners living in their fantasies.”

In addition, sometimes it feels like I have an endless to-do list in my life, and can’t rest until I get to the end of it, but I never do. I also find myself wondering, after leading a Sangha for 10 years, why I’m still holding sole responsibility for so many Sangha-related things all by myself. My first inclination is to be frustrated with others for not making the Sangha more of a priority in their lives, but then I reflect on how the bigger problem is probably my inability to let the Sangha be more of a collaborative endeavor. I don’t know how to fix that, so I’m left feeling over-responsible and inadequate at the same time.

The biggest thing bumming me out recently, however, has been issues arising within Extinction Rebellion, the climate activist group I’ve gotten involved in. This group, commonly referred to by the initials “XR,” employs non-violent direct action to build a sense of urgency about our climate and ecological crisis, and pressure those in power to take radical action appropriate for an emergency situation.

Ever since I heard about the existence of this movement about a year ago, I’ve been excited. “Finally,” I thought. “People are waking up to the disastrous course we’re on.” I’ve been fascinated and inspired by civil disobedience all of my life, and have spent many long hours pondering how Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi, founds the guts and wherewithal to demand a change to the status quo. But you can’t really do effective non-violent direct action by yourself and have many people notice. You have to have a whole bunch of people deeply committed to a cause… and finally, finally, the arising of Extinction Rebellion indicated such a group was coalescing! Rather than live out my life swallowing the bitter pill of injustice and environmental destruction because there’s nothing to be done, I was going to be able participate in an effort to make real changes.

But before I even got close to a chance to be arrested wearing my priests’ robes, my local chapter of XR has been bogged down with infighting and controversy. XR as an international movement, perhaps because of its many successes, has also become the target of intense criticism from both insiders and outsiders. People say an emphasis on civil disobedience and potential arrest excludes groups of people – particularly people of color – who are likely to suffer to much harsher treatment at the hands of the police, and in the justice system. People say we need to make XR as an organization a model for the society we want to see – diverse, equitable, inclusive, sensitive – and given XR is currently made up overwhelmingly of white, middle-class people, we’ve got to do some serious study and training before we can effectively move forward with action. It’s not surprising at all, of course, that XR has ended up in a quagmire of sensitive issues our society as a whole has not been dealing with well at all.

My greatest hope for real change in this world, then, had seemed like a bright balloon rising high into the sky… which then came untied and did wild loop de loops as it descended quickly to the ground, making a farting sound all the way. Why were ideals and hopes so easily crushed? I wondered.

A Journey Back to the Light

So, I was feeling rather negative when it came time for a one-day retreat at my Zen center recently. The retreat, as it approached, seemed like just another thing on my to-do list, and once again I was holding primary responsibility for making it happen. In the midst of my funk, though, I also knew that a retreat was the best possible thing I could do to get out of it.

For the first couple meditation sessions in the morning, I just sat and experienced my dark, discouraged mood. With nothing to distract me, I felt the deep sighs move through me. I noticed how my spine wanted to melt into a defeated slouch. My cheeks felt heavy with a kind of deadpan pout. Occasionally my eyes teared up. Life seemed unfriendly, cold, corrupt, and uninspiring. I found many thoughts arising in my mind about what I could do or change, out there, that would improve things and make me feel more hopeful or positive. I just watched the thoughts come and go within the larger container of my body-mind, my mood, the day, and the practice.

By mid-morning I was thoroughly acquainted with my discouraged state of body-mind, so I leaned into it a little bit. What else was there, behind my mood and its associated negative conclusions? What I found was a sense of betrayal, best described by the statement, “I never even got a chance to really be involved in XR, and now it’s imploding!” In other words, at the core of my negativity was self-concern. “I felt hopeful before,” I thought, “and now everything’s getting complicated and may not even work out.” Importantly, at this point – because of lots of experience in practice – I didn’t judge these internal thoughts and feelings. They just were. Right or wrong, legitimate or not, selfish or saintly, they just were.

It was during the meditation periods after lunch that I was willing to let go of my concerns and relax into zazen more wholeheartedly. As Uchiyama Roshi put it, shikantaza is “an effort to continuously aim at a correct sitting posture with flesh and bones and to totally leave everything to that.”[i] I wasn’t going to solve the problems in my life or in the world within the next hour, in any case. I might as well let go, and for a time, let things be. Gradually, the clouds hanging over my body-mind started to thin; things started to look a little brighter. Then there were even some openings in the clouds… I noticed the sunlight streaming in through the windows of the zendo. I felt gratitude for the people sitting with me.

As my body-mind brightened, life looked more spacious. Possible ways forward appeared, some of them even resembling, in some respects, opportunities. A thought about Extinction Rebellion crossed my mind at one point: “Who ever said this would be easy?” I reconnected with a sense of determination and sufficiency. Accepting that there had been setbacks to my fledgling activist career, I clarified an intention to move ahead anyway. “I’m sure I’ll learn something, at the very least,” I thought.

Significantly, these internal verbal observations alone would not have been enough to brighten my body-mind. These thoughts weren’t arguments; they spontaneously arose only after I had spent a day recognizing my feelings, allowing them some space, gently exploring them, and then settling into my favorite form of meditation.

Four Steps to Freeing Ourselves from Negative States

After the one-day retreat, I was preparing to present a four-step process of brightening the mind in a Dharma Talk: 1) Acknowledging (noticing and admitting how you’re feeling); 2) Taking some time to fully experience whatever it is you’re feeling, without trying to change it; 3) Exploring what’s going on within you, gently and non-judgmentally, again without an agenda, and 4) Engaging in an activity, like zazen, you know is calming and restorative.

As I was creating an outline for the talk I thought, “Hey, wait a minute. A four-step process for dealing with difficult feelings, that sounds familiar.” Then I remembered the RAIN process taught by Tara Brach, a well-known Vipassana teacher, psychologist, and author. In her system, names for each of the four steps conveniently start with R-A-I-N, and are:

“Recognize what is happening;
Allow the experience to be there, just as it is;
Investigate with interest and care;
Nurture with self-compassion.”[ii]

How cool that I had spontaneously rediscovered a four-step spiritual process already elaborated by others! Sure, maybe I was unconsciously plagiarizing Brach’s RAIN formulation, but I don’t think so – I’ve heard of it, but never really worked with it. Instead, I think this rediscovery reflects the fact that methods of Dharma practice arise out of our direct experience as human beings. Different teachers and traditions will have their own ways of describing, communicating, and teaching the methods that work, but in the final analysis they’ll have a lot in common.

As I go over each of the four steps in more detail, then, I’ll borrow the easily-memorized RAIN terms – recognize, allow, investigate, nurture – from Tara Brach, but the descriptions of the steps are my own. Therefore, my apologies to Tara – she describes and defines the different steps, especially Investigate and Nurture, somewhat differently than I do. In particular, my outline of the four steps actually resembles her older formulation, where the “N” step was “Non-Identification,” or “realizing freedom from narrow identity.” Now Brach emphasizes the importance of making Nurturing a step all its own, but includes a step she calls “after the RAIN,” which is where you simply settle into the moment and “realize freedom from narrow identity.” Brach’s new four-steps-plus is probably very wise, so if you find this practice inspiring, I recommend you visit her webpage about RAIN at tarabrach.com/rain.

Step One: Recognize, or Acknowledge, Our Experience

Let’s start with “recognizing,” or as I put it, “acknowledging.” When we’re feeling off – irritable, angry, stressed, depressed, anxious, dull, etc. – there are plenty of reasons we may not fully recognize what’s going on with us. We may be really busy, and don’t have time to sit around pondering how we feel – we just push on through. We may avoid facing our feelings because when we do, for a time we feel even worse. Acknowledging we’re upset or in a funk may seem like opening a can of worms, because it begs the question, “Why?” and there may be a bunch of issues in our life we don’t feel up to dealing with right now. Or ever. In addition, there’s often a temptation to practice denial about experiencing negative states, because they’re incompatible with our ideas about ourselves as competent adults, or experienced spiritual practitioners.

Stopping and facing our negative states of body-mind takes courage and determination. We have to be willing to tolerate discomfort for a while. We have to acknowledge negative emotions like disappointment, anger, or fear, before we can be sure there’s a way to relieve them. Admitting we’re not feeling well can be humbling. It’s no wonder many of us will find ourselves avoiding meditation just when we’re feeling lots of stress or difficult emotions.

The practice of recognizing and acknowledging our negative states of body-mind is crucial, however, if we want to begin the process of freeing ourselves from energy-sucking bondage to them. At times we may need to simply endure feeling less than our best, and carry on – but the sooner we take the time and space to recognize and acknowledge what we’re experiencing, the sooner we’ll be able to function in the world in a more effective, beneficial, skillful – not-to-mention more enjoyable – way.

Step Two: Allow Ourselves Time to Experience Negative States

The next step in the process of brightening the body-mind is to take some time to allow ourselves to fully experience our negative state. There’s no minimum requirement for how long this should take – depending on the complexity of the situation and how powerful your emotions, it may only take a few moments, or it may require days or weeks.

The important thing is that you give yourself the time and space to fully experience a negative state with your body and mind without trying to immediately figure it out or fix it. Clarity only comes with stillness. If we leap too quickly to figuring or fixing, we’ll fail to see clearly everything that’s going on for us. In addition, if we’re too fixated on finding an internal solution to our negativity, we may end up doing what’s called “spiritual bypassing,” where we employ the tools of spiritual practice in order to avoid feeling anything unpleasant. Lasting solutions to our problems, including the arising of negative states, require us to gain insight into our greed, hate, and delusion, and then to change our behaviors of body, speech, and mind to accord with our insight. It’s good to build up your tolerance for experiencing negative states if your tendency is to leap right to trying to get rid of them.

On the other hand, of course, allowing some space for our negative experience is not at all the same thing as wallowing in it. What’s the difference? It’s all about intention. When we wallow, we’re essentially accepting our negative thoughts and emotions as legitimate and true. As we dwell on the subjects and sensations of our upset, discouragement, or depression, we weave tighter and tighter narratives about how things are, and what unlikely scenarios would make it possible for us to feel positive again. In contrast, when we allow space for a negative state in a mindful way, we don’t fight or argue with it, but neither do we identify with it. We experience it fully, but in the way we would fully experience getting drenched in a downpour: We may be very uncomfortable, but we also understand this is a passing state.

As we allow our negative state to manifest, ideally in a quiet place like meditation, where we don’t have to worry about its impacts on others, we notice everything we can about how we’re feeling. We become aware of physical sensations, our posture, and our breathing. We notice areas of tension. We observe the emotions we’re experiencing, recognizing that apparently conflicting emotions such as anger and grief and be present simultaneously. We notice the thoughts that go through the mind, particularly the ones that arise repeatedly, or feel very compelling. In short, we take stock of what’s going on.

Step Three: Investigate, or Explore, Our Experience More Deeply

The next step is investigation, or exploring. Once we’ve taken stock of what’s going on, more or less, we explore more deeply. It’s important to do this gently, non-judgmentally, and without leaping forward with an agenda to figure out and fix. We simply look, exploring our experience long enough that we have the opportunity to see the connections between things. We may not end up with any useful insights, and that’s okay. But we open up to them.

Maybe, for example, you notice you’re feeling angry. Who are you feeling angry at? What words attach themselves to the anger, if any? Maybe you notice you’re thinking, “How dare he treat me like that!” Then you explore that thought. Note: all of this is what Tara Brach and others call “felt-sense” investigation. It’s not mental analysis, it’s exploring what’s going on in your own, present-moment, embodied experience. In other words, if you explore the thought, “How dare he treat me like that,” you don’t ponder the outrageousness of someone else’s actions. You look within and ask, “What surrounds that thought? What else am I feeling or thinking, related to that?” Perhaps you then discover a conviction that you have been careful to treat the subject of your anger with respect, and that respect wasn’t reciprocated. Hmmm… now you have some new insight into what’s going on for you: A value for fairness and reciprocity. This insight may or may not open up some new possibilities for you in terms of your actions, and it may or may not instantly brighten your body-mind, but you’ve just managed to untangle another tiny piece of yarn from your tangled ball of karma.

Whether I’m doing this kind of internal investigation during meditation or at some other time, I do it for as long as I have time for, or until it no longer seems fruitful. Once your mind starts to wander, or your analysis gets too intellectual, or you keep rehashing the same stuff over and over, it’s time to move on.

Step Four: Nurturing and Non-Identification

The next step is nurturing. As I mentioned earlier, Tara Brach emphasizes the importance of practicing some deliberate self-compassion in this step, very much like metta practice, after a recognition we’re suffering.[iii] If you feel the need for that, go ahead! Brach then describes a sense of “non-identification,” or “realizing freedom from narrow identity” that arises “after the RAIN.” As a Zennie I’m inclined to conflate the two steps of nurturing and non-identification, because I find non-identification – especially as accessed through zazen – the most nurturing thing of all! I suspect similar reasoning was behind Brach’s original formulation of RAIN with “Non-identification” as the fourth step.

In any case, this is the step where we actually aim to brighten our body-mind in a holistic and sustainable way. This has been the whole point of the process: To challenge the tyranny of negative states in order to live with gratitude and wisdom, and to fulfill our bodhisattva vows. We are not simply victims of circumstance, internal or external. We can change things for the better.

However, we forgo the usual, ego-driven and short-sighted methods of denial, distraction, or trying to vanquish negative states by sheer force of will. Instead, we avail ourselves of tried and true methods of parting the dark clouds: Exercise, sleep, eating well, seeking the support of good friends, a walk in the woods. Most importantly, for us Buddhist practitioners, we make time for meditation, which allows us to, in some small way at least, transcend ourselves. For a moment we set aside our personal agendas to consider other possibilities. In the space of meditation, anger, depression, anxiety, discouragement, and despair come and go. We are bigger than they are.

In conclusion, when we’re feeling funky, miserable, or just “off,” it’s our responsibility – and our opportunity – as practitioners to turn inward and see what we can do about it. This doesn’t mean we don’t try to make changes in the outside world, or in ourselves, but at least part of our problem always lies within our own body-mind. And “solving” that problem doesn’t involved the same kinds of tools we employ in the rest of our lives. Instead, we employ the ingenious method of practice: Acknowledging dukkha, or dis-ease; allowing time and space to fully recognize what’s going on; exploring our experience with curiosity and gentleness, and then doing whatever we can to brighten the body-mind.