Before Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment he was a confused 20- and 30-something looking to learn how to live a spiritual life. Each time in this column we look at what it might be like if a fictional Siddhartha was on his spiritual journey today. How would he combine Buddhism and dating? How would he handle stress in the workplace? What Would Sid Do is devoted to taking an honest look at what we as meditators face in the modern world.
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I wrote to you a while ago about interfaith relationships and you wrote an awesome blog in response. Unfortunately, this relationship ended. What would Sid say about breaking up when you are still in love? --JD
First off, I'm sorry to hear your relationship ended. While any student of Buddhism may quote to you that the reality of impermanence is a bitch, it's a whole other thing to feel the loss of a relationship. I empathize and know that pain. If you have been with someone for months, or even years, and they simply disappear from your life, it can leave an empty hole which is hard to fill.
I think Sid's first piece of advice would be to treat yourself with incredible gentleness and take the time you need to mourn the loss of your relationship. We all have our own ways of reacting to a break up. Some people like to aggressively drink, some like to have rebound hook ups, others like to hide out in their bed and ignore the fact that their lover is no longer with them. However, at the core of these responses are the root emotions that keep us trapped in suffering: aggression, passion and ignorance.
A way to counter-act that level of perpetuating suffering is to give yourself a lot of space to simply feel what you are feeling. Emotions don't have to be riptides we get lost in; they can wash over us like waves. If you still feel love for your ex, then let that love wash over you. If you feel anger, allow that to wash over you. If you feel guilt, let that wash over you. The more you allow the emotions you are currently feeling to rise up, without kicking and screaming against them, the more refreshed you will feel when they pass.
If the primary thing you are feeling is love for your ex, then love your ex. Explore what that means to you at this point. Be curious about your experience. Is it the same sort of love that existed when you first started dating? Is it the same love that existed when you got into that all-night fight and you crashed on the couch? The more you explore how you feel and how you have felt in the past the more you may realize that love, like all emotions, is a very fluid thing.
I am always astounded by people who have loved one another as friends for years and then end up becoming romantically involved. It's like they had one way of relating to each other and then they just did a slide to the right and all of a sudden romantic love bloomed. Perhaps later on down the road they might slide further and deepen their love and get married. Or maybe they slide in a different direction and break up. That love may dissipate or change, but that does not mean that it did not exist, in a relative way, at one time and was valuable for both of them.
In other words, you don't have to layer concepts of how to define a relationship with another being to love them in some way. You can just practice being in love. Without going too hippie on you, I'm a firm believer that the more we open our hearts to others -- including those who have wronged us, broken our hearts, or at times left us paralyzed with grief -- the greater chance we have at achieving enlightenment. To keep an open heart in a difficult time is the greatest and most rewarding challenge of all.
To keep your ex in your heart may be scary, but you have to remember that we all love love. To receive or give it, even in the midst of your own heart-ache or feeling of loss, is an incredible gift.
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ignorance is not a root emotion. it is not even a choice. aggression has as an underlying reality of ignorance or unawareness no exceptions.
passion well that depends. passion can be a longing the same as desire and it can be misguided the same as misguided desire.
as someone I know would say "but they chose ignorance". yes it appears that way but appearances are very misleading. the underlying reality of such a choice is ignorance, always the culprit is ignorance.
all choices have boundaries and those boundaries are our level or degree of unawareness of reality. one might say our unawakened status. a synonym for unawareness is ignorance.
the term free will and personal responsibility are very misleading. what would religion be without the teaching and I might add the misguided teaching of free will and personal responsiblity.
responsibility has as an origin as the ability to respond which is a correct definition that has been misapplied to mean we are culpable. ie human fallen status.
discover the origin and meaning of our unawareness and a whole new world will appear in one's consciousness.
Better advice....
Mourn the loss...and let that person be on their way and live their life as they choose. When people wish to be with us, we welcome them. When they wish to leave, we do not pursue. (Ajahn Chah).
This is what your understanding lacks, because it is unbalanced and not grounded in direct experience.
Mature understanding of True Nature RECOGNIZES and accepts the reality of Formlessness (The Awakened Mind)...but also recognizes--and has COMPASSION for---the EXPERIENCE of Form (The Awakened Heart).
Awakened Mind without Awakenened Heart (or vice-versa) leds to delusion and suffering. Without the Awakened Heart---there is no respect for the experience of Form---and one loses either the ability to function in the World of Form...or treast the suffering of others with callousness (since it is all "empty" anyway).
Awakned Heart without Awakened Mind leads to sentimentality without Wisdom. Help that does not truly help others to free themselves from their suffering.
Correct understanding dynamically BALANCES both Form and Formlessness. One lives understanding and acceptance of both...while attaching to NEITHER:
"Wisdom tells me I am nothing (formlessness); LOVE tells me that I am everything(Compassion for the experience of Form, while realizing the Intepenetration of all Forms) . BETWEEN THE TWO, MY LIFE FLOWS."