A few months ago I had a toothache and so I went to see a dentist. He
had a look at the problem and then knocked off a bit of my tooth and
smoothed the rough edge down. I can feel it now as I’m writing this. He
told me that he could try to build the tooth back up, but that a basic
rule of dentistry is that removal strengthens and addition weakens.
I am not a Buddhist and I don’t know much about Buddhism. But one
thing I know – and I think it’s probably all I need or care to know – is
that Buddhism teaches a simple truth: suffering comes from attachment,
and the end of attachment is the end of suffering. So whenever you can
feel yourself feeling bad, you know you’ve become attached to something.
Something matters to you.
There is no end to the list of things you can be attached to, no end
to the things that can matter to you, things that you care about, things
that have meaning for you. People sometimes talk about the ‘meaning of
life’ – in the Buddhist view, meaning means suffering. So the way to
stop suffering is to relinquish meaning. Let it go. Surrender.
So what’s at the top of the list? What means the most to you? Your marriage? Your job? Money? The stories you tell yourself about who or what you are?
But here is the root of the matter – nothing ever stays the same. The
world is constantly changing, and so are you. Trying to hold on to
something that’s always changing is like trying to tie water up in a
brown paper package – it can’t be done and only makes you angry (or sad,
or frustrated, or depressed, or a whole host of bad stuff). Trying to
hold onto impermanent things (ie everything) is a recipe for unhappiness
and pain.
So what’s the alternative? Instead of clinging,
recognize the truth – that you are always changing, and so is the world –
and so to follow the moving currents of life is the only sensible
option if you want to be happy. This means letting go of your stories
about what matters. It means giving up everything – in a sense, it means
losing yourself. When you see the world through your own eyes, not the
eyes of who you tell yourself you are – wife, father, teacher,
introvert, victim, leader – it’s all so different.
Just as in dentistry, in life, subtracting is always better than
adding. When you drop the stories you’ve been telling yourself, drop the
labels – when all that stuff doesn’t matter any more – something
strange happens. Life starts to work. All the things you cared about and
strived for start to show up. The philosopher of Asian religion, Alan
Watts, called this the ‘law of reversed effort’ – when a man who can’t
swim struggles to stay afloat, he sinks, but when he yields to the
water, he floats; when a fly in a spiders’ web struggles to become free,
it only enmeshes itself more in the web. Being still, watching as life
unfolds, unattached (not caring about stuff)and letting things work in
their own miraculous way is also called the ‘art of allowing.’
The truth of the matter is that, whatever we might think, we cannot
force life to go our way. When I was a kid, my dad taught me how to saw
wood – he told me to make sure I was moving along the grain, and to let
the saw do the work. After a bit of practice, it did indeed feel as if
the saw was doing all the work. I was there, holding the saw, but there
was a kind of letting go, a kind of effortlessness that led to more
effective results. By working with the grain of wood, a carpenter can
create amazing and stylish pieces of furniture, but he has to respect
the integrity of the material – the way it flows. By sailing – or
tacking – with the wind, a skilful sailor can travel enormous distances,
but she has to be observant and follow the changing air currents.
I am not a Buddhist. That’s another label, another story to tell
myself. But to let go of attachment, to stop caring about things, to
allow life to unfold and, in so doing, to achieve more, seems to me like
a better way to live.
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