Suffering Indulged
1 February 2009
Philadelphia, PA
Hours do become days, and days do become weeks and... Like many clichés, there is a deep, uncrackable truth to that awareness. I am also noticing just how much, and how easily I can become self-absorbed, as well as an awareness that (counterintuitive though it seem at first blush) the more I meditate, the less self-absorbed I become.
This strikes me as one of the more important insights I have had in a while.
My cravings have a self-indulgent quality to them that I need to pay attention to here. For a moment I slipped into an all too familiar posture of self-judgement and recrimination that I also need to pay attention to - another, more subtle form of self-absorption, no doubt.
Once again a word, in this case "indulge", threw me a rope and brought me safely back to shore. Indulge means "to allow space and time for". And in its other form, indulgens, this word means "to be kind, yield". At its core is the ancient European word dlegh, which means "to engage oneself". This old word with such deep roots is related to another astonishingly old English word, play.
So, being self-indulgent suddenly takes on a new meaning. What if I can sit for a moment with a craving, with whatever it is I am clinging to? Whatever it is - sex, drugs, rock and roll - no matter. And what if in that next moment I indulge that craving, or some compulsion? Does that matter? Well, the thought that occurs to me right now is: both yes and no.
It matters because in that very act of feeding the craving I am creating the conditions for my own continuing suffering. So, in that moment I am also creating the need to alleviate that suffering in the future. This is so because the one thing that I know to be true is that feeding those cravings increases my hunger, which leads to more cravings. Attachment leading to more attachment - an old story.
At the same time it does not matter if, after a moment of deepening awareness, I "indulge" in those cravings. In such rare moments of wakefulness I must take in all possibilities, and not just the positive or "enlightened" ones (that I also so often crave). If I were to magically reach some state where I "knew" that I would not feed those cravings, then I would have done nothing more than attain a higher and more refined state of delusion. It is in this very awareness that I could, or might, or perhaps likely will, succumb to any particular craving or compulsion, that the possibility to be free from these cravings exists.
The more I move away from the idea of "enlightenment" as my life's purpose, the more I find myself drawn toward freedom and liberation as a way to live. Alleviating suffering in the world must begin with me.
As I sit here writing this, again it is clear to me that the only way out of our/my suffering is the way in. It is to sit with that suffering, permit it to enter every cell of my body. To acknowledge that clinging to something, or someone - even when such clinging is also an act of love - is to be human. To allow space and time to, that is, to indulge in the suffering that is both heartbreakingly unavoidable and a fundamental choice of the human condition.
The other day I went to a funeral. They are all sad affairs, but this one was particularly so. The husband of a woman I once worked with died of a massive heart attack and other complications. His wife had to make the decision to end the life support in the hospital. She had to choose to let go of what she most desired, most craved - another moment with her beloved. The whole catastrophe of living and loving was right there in the room. Sic transit gloria mundi, so go the things of the world.
The tone of the funeral was one that I was familiar with from my childhood. The casket was open sitting as it was in the front of a small chapel. After viewing the body I went over to embrace the widow to tell her (as my grandmother taught me): I am sorry for your troubles.
The suffering she was enduring flowed from her body like sweat from an athlete. In that moment she was suffering embodied. Suffering incarnate. She was Mary's suffering body holding her dead son in her lap. She was suffering indulged.
A few moments later they began the ritual of closing the casket. The funeral director slowly cranked the gears that lowered the body deeper into the casket. The widow wailed, saying I love you, over and over. Then they covered the body with a blanket, and put a white handkerchief over the face.
Another gate closing between the two of them.
And oh how she suffered. How she craved having another minute with him. Another minute to say I love you. Or perhaps a minute to argue about taking out the trash. Another minute seems like such a small thing to crave. And how she keened for her husband as that minute never occurred.
Then they closed the casket. Yet another gate closing.
At the graveyard after the end of the closing prayers two workmen came over to lower the flower-covered casket into the ground. There was no sound from the clutch of mourners gathered all around the cold, barren gravesite. No sound save for the thick straps that were holding the casket, groaning now as they rubbed against each other when the workmen slowly, with a reverence beyond their station, lowered the body deep inside the grave.
It was as if the hard ground itself were softening, yielding, to receive him. As if the earth herself, were taking in, creating space and time for, indulging all the suffering that was pouring out from the living, as we walked so carefully back down the frozen path, and back into our lives.