Turmoil in the depths

What I do when caught in the undertow

Last week we hopped on the MV Camic for a four-day scuba trip around Thailand’s Andaman Sea that we planned as the highlight of our honeymoon. World-famous reefs packed with enormous schools of dazzling tropical fish and menacing eels lurked around every turn. But even as my mind marveled at this magical planet, I couldn’t fully enjoy any moment. Tension gripped deeply my body, heart, and mind, completely exhausting me. Instead of bonding all throughout romantic island-side meals in the galley, many moments felt disconnected as my eyes darted around distracted, unconsciously seeking escape from the turmoil within.

I can’t count how many times since I began meditating 6.5 years ago I’ve felt like I finally found the key for freedom from suffering. They’ve come while reading a book on mindfulness or Buddhism, a sudden click of understanding of interbeing or attachment that allowed me to float through the rest of the day tickled by whatever would happen around. Other times deep attention and calm has arisen from persistent meditation, and I found a peaceful home in the breath and present moment. More recently they’ve been after a big. release, feeling like I got the worst out of my system and it should be clear sailing from now on.

But storms keep getting the better of me.

I often wake early in the morning with some amorphous discomfort, and unable to ignore it and return to sleep I decide the only option is to meditate with it. I start simply, just allowing my attention to settle on the body or breath and practicing noticing and letting be with the uncomfortable sensations. As attention settles, the fog of sensations clear from parts of the body.

Instead of feeling more at ease, however, the centers of clenching become sharper and more uncomfortable. I continue to sit with them for a while, reminding myself that they’re impermanent. Sometimes with this gentle attention I keep opening up, bit by bit until it’s time to start the day. One thought that’s helped me recently is an interpretation of the Tibetan teacher Tilopa’s “Six Nails”:

Let go of what has passed.

Let go of what may come.

Let go of what is happening now.

Don’t try to figure anything out.

Don’t try to make anything happen.

Relax, right now, and rest.

Occasionally there’s more anxious energy on the surface, like the mornings after both of our scuba trips in Thailand (I’ve always been nervous in the water). The tightness is so gripping that I can’t relax and I can’t rest. In the spirit of insight meditation, I figure my body is telling me it’s time to go deeper.

I focus more intensely on the stuck places, investigating with an intimate attention. Along with the attentional effort I try to drum up intentional effort too, imagining the energy of a smile inside or directing words of loving-kindness to the suffering. Things usually start to shift.

Sometimes the center of intensity moves, and I keep following it with the same effort. Whenever the deepest place is reached, usually there’s a release of energy ranging from heat and burps to whole body shaking. I stay with it as long as I can, allowing my body to soften more.

On some particularly rough days, that’s when the struggle can really begin. Now the squeeze returns, as strong as before. But since I’ve run out of energy to be with it, I can’t stay calm. Body, heart, and mind suffer. After years of practice and even training to become a teacher, I feel defeated by simple sensations that are supposed to be impermanent. But I can’t let go.

Yorie tries her best to help, and her care and compassion is superhuman. It’s often thanks to her I can start to climb out of the hole. But there’s only so much she can do when I’m really in the depths of it.

So I might tighten further, deeper into aversion. In a destructive cycle, it can take me hours to find a way to relax enough to reenergize. Even if I can do that, another round of opening up might then just exhaust me again, leading to tears of despair. Fortunately this too is impermanent; eventually I’m saved by sleep and live to smile again the next day.

Part of me wonders if something is wrong with my practice. Why can’t I just let the clenching be, and be without anxiety about the imperfection as Zen teacher Seng-tzan guided? Or perhaps that wondering in itself is the unnecessary suffering, and these storms are unavoidable suppressed pain coming to the surface of my softening body, the feeling of which represents not a failure of mindfulness but rather a deepening of it?

I heard an interview this week with the doctor and writer Rachel Naomi Remen, who has been living with Crohn’s disease for fifty years. She said she was angry about her diagnosis for almost two decades, until she realized that the pain gave her more compassion for her patients. She learned how to listen to them and be with their suffering, allowing their humanity to heal her own suffering too. Since then, she’s trained other doctors to remember that there’s far more to healing a human than curing an illness, and that it all begins with sharing presence.

So I pray that my pain will transform into compassion for myself and everyone else caught in contraction, facing their demons alone through sleepless nights. I hope that connecting with them will bring us both healing. I will continue my best effort to welcome in these sensations with a loving presence wide enough to hold them tenderly — and try to not be so hard on myself when I fail. And instead of lamenting the enjoyment I missed floating underwater in paradise, I’ll keep it as a valuable reminder that it doesn’t matter how dreamy life is on the outside if I can’t access the peace within.

Your brother in suffering and hope,

Nico

Hi friends! Hope you don’t mind this diversion from the Tao series — it felt right to follow my body into getting back to basics. Tomorrow Yorie and I will embark on a ten-ish day silent vipassana meditation retreat at Wat Khao Tham, see you on the other side.

In the meantime, enjoy this short poem I wrote last summer after connecting an experience in meditation with a previous scuba trip.

The Big Blue

Diving, deeper and deeper into this Great Blue Hole.

I am trained, certified, and scared

As my buddy flounders at the surface,

Disappearing when I sink into the dark.

And then I am stuck too, lost in space,

Until a silhouette above reminds me to let go;

Even here, I am not alone.

Sharks emerge, circling with menacing jaws.

Keep calm, keep breathing

Keep opening, keep releasing.

Eyes wide, gliding through spikes above and below

In long lost caves still full of life and somber beauty,

I make my peace with the depths.