The name of my talk today is Stay in Close.
One of the themes we have been touching into this week is staying close to our experience, especially our dukkha. Dukkha has many translations, but vulnerability is the one I return to most often. It holds so much. It includes discomfort, dissatisfaction, fear, longing, and the quiet ache of things not being as we wish they were.
Staying close to our dukkha does not mean pushing it away. And it does not mean rolling around in it either. I am interested in something more like a middle path. A way of getting closer to our vulnerability without abandoning ourselves or overwhelming ourselves.
This feels like an especially important skill right now, when there is so much dukkha moving through our world.
Before I go further, I want to name something that is always true in these talks. I speak from my own experience. My practice is personal. It is about my life and how I live it. That is what I know most honestly.
I also speak personally because I trust that when something is described carefully and fully, it can become an invitation. Sometimes the sound of another person’s voice is enough to open the door to our own inner knowing. We recognize something familiar. We learn something about ourselves.
It seems to me that the way we relate to our dukkha changes as we grow.
As children, we cry. We rage. We let our feelings move through us. Sometimes it takes a while, but eventually the wave passes and we return to something like equilibrium.
As we get older, though, we are expected to handle things more quietly. No more crying. No more throwing fits. We are told to “deal with it.” In other words, to stay close to it.
This became very vivid for me recently during a meditation.
I am four or five years old, before I start school. I am holding hands with my dukkha. She is small and trembling. She is scared and wants help. She wants someone bigger to take care of her.
But there does not seem to be anyone available. My brother is at school. My mother cannot really help. In fact, she needs soothing herself. So somehow, it is up to me.
I do not want to go outside. It is too cold. There is snow on the ground and sharp air that would sting my cheeks and toes. I would have to put on my snowsuit and boots and mittens, and that feels like too much.
So I look for something I can do alone. I could find a book. Or one of my dolls. Or just stand by the window.
The house feels normal. The furnace clicks on and off. My mother is moving around in the kitchen. The dog is asleep near my grandfather’s chair.
The dog frightens me. He barks at me. And still, I can see how my grandfather loves him. He talks to him quietly. The dog stays close, wagging his tail. They know each other. They know where they are in relation to one another.
That closeness gives them a sense of safety.
Even though no one is speaking to me or paying particular attention to me, I feel reassured by the simple fact that we are together in the house. Everything is okay for now.
This, too, is staying close.
We begin by being close to ourselves. Close to the quiet of our inner life. Close to the rhythm of the house breathing, the sense of others nearby.
As we get older, staying close also means not divorcing ourselves from our difficult feelings. It means noticing when we wish things were different. And if that feels too hard, at least acknowledging that wish.
Staying close means allowing ourselves to see how things actually are.
This has been the primary teaching of my practice. I cannot move out of or away from dukkha unless I am willing to see it clearly. To feel it. Both the internal suffering and the external turmoil.
For a long time, I understood this intellectually but was not very skilled at it. I knew I was supposed to be with difficult feelings, yet I spent many years pushing them away.
On retreat, the instruction was often to let thoughts go. And that felt like a relief. I did not have to stay with them. I could push them aside. I believed this was the practice.
I spent years doing long retreats. Sitting. Walking. Trying hard. But the results were not onward leading.
What I see now is that I had numbed myself. Underneath, the anger and frustration were still there. I was working very hard to deny or suppress them, to bully them into submission.
Our inner lives are complex. It is not easy to learn how to stay close to difficult thoughts and feelings without abandoning ourselves.
And now, alongside our personal struggles, there is a shared external dukkha. A sense of national and global upheaval. A feeling that we cannot even agree on a shared reality.
Staying close to this means acknowledging how deeply we wish things were different. How unbearable things can feel. How shocking it is to see so much hatred and division.
It is exceedingly challenging.
And it helps to remember that we do know something about how to do this. We know how to slow down. We know how to be kind.
We can stay close to ourselves. And we can keep looking for trustworthy others to stay close to as well. Threading our way together, as best we can, along that middle path.
May the goodness that arises from our practice be of benefit to all beings everywhere.
