Rio Branham

How do you come as you are when you’re not happy with who you are? How do you accept the phrase nothing to fix when it feels like things are falling apart? Like my car door handle that broke so now I have to roll down the window and open the door using the outside handle, that definitely needs to be fixed. How do you sit with the phrase nothing to do when you obviously have a never-ending to-do list? I like the answer spiritual teacher Adi Da Samraj said:

Relax. Nothing is under control.

Easier said than done. But really, these are questions I struggle with and I wanted to explore these ideas with you today.

In recent years I’ve become more aware of how my mood and state of mind changes with the seasons. Specifically during the cold, dark months of winter I see myself become more isolated, get more in my head, less interested in my hobbies, and feel less connected to sangha and others I’m close to. As a result, I seem to be less happy overall during this time of year. Let’s call it seasonal depression because that’s probably what it is.

What’s been interesting as I become more aware of this is that I can remember that I was in a very different mental state in the not too distant past. It’s not hard to recall feeling quite the opposite. During the warmer months when there’s more sun I felt happy, optimistic, inspired, and a general sense of feeling connected to people and things going on around me. 

This year, through my practice, I’ve started to conceptualize these seasonal mood swings in a new way and it relates to the delusive self. 

I also want to define Self-Power and Other-Power, which are related to the idea of a delusive self. In Shin Buddhism Self-Power, Jiriki, refers to the reliance on one’s own self and our own individual efforts to attain enlightenment and spiritual development. Whereas, Other-Power, Tariki, is more about relying on the power that comes from outside of ourselves, specifically Amida Buddha’s compassion.

I’ve noticed when I am feeling down I start to go into fixing mode, trying to pick apart each area of my life to see where the problem is. Surely there must be something that is making me feel this way and if I can just figure it out I can fix it and I will make myself feel better. This is a prime example of Self-Power. But unfortunately I don’t have the power to fix things like the inversion and make the winter day have more sunlight.

I don’t seem to do the same thing when I’m feeling good, however. I don’t investigate each area of my life to see which one is responsible for making me enjoy life and be happy. It’s just an overall feeling, I just feel connected and that makes me feel ok regardless of what’s going on in my life. This feels more like Other-Power. It’s less about me and more about an acknowledgment of my place in the greater whole. And these are very different reactions to these two states of mind, maybe that’s obvious, of course we react differently when we feel different. But I think how I react to these states of mind really affects how I experience them.

It’s said that the first words the Buddha spoke after his enlightenment experience were: 

Wonder of wonders! All beings are Buddhas fully endowed with wisdom and virtue. Only their self-oriented delusive thinking prevents them from realizing it.

This seems to describe the dichotomy in my responses to different states of mind. When I get into a fix-it mind-self, I am strongly entrenched in this self-oriented delusive thinking. Something is wrong, I must find it and get rid of it. It’s a mindset focused on my own Self-Power to try and fix something. This approach strengthens the very delusive thinking that has me feeling disconnected in the first place, a false sense of separateness.

When I’m not trying to fix or solve, I actually am able to relax in the awareness that nothing is under control. Those times when I have a general sense of well-being in my life, it’s not because there’s nothing wrong, but my perspective is focused on connection, on Other-Power. I love how Rafe Martin describes enlightenment in his book A Zen Life of Buddha:

“Enlightenment” suggests there is something you get and that once you’ve gotten it, you are “enightened”, but the word “intimacy” may come closer to the truth… we become of less interest to ourselves and, in this losing is finding… we rediscover our original, undiminished intimacy with all things. No longer strangers to this earth, to others, or to ourselves, such intimacy has healing power.

Seeing enlightenment as intimacy helps us understand that it’s something we are in relationship with, it’s dynamic. Not some binary, static thing that we either have or don’t, it’s not a future reward that we will someday achieve if we are good enough, but rather a quality of experience that we learn to recognize and get to know over our lifetime.

I’m certainly no relationship expert but it seems like an apt comparison. In my experience, being overly interested in myself does not contribute to higher levels of intimacy in a relationship. Rather, intimacy grows through re-orienting ourselves towards our relationship with the other. Similarly, when we are self-oriented we cannot see how intimately connected we are to all things around us, because all we see is a separate self. But when we loosen our grip on this view of ourselves then this reality of intimacy with all things becomes clearer. The reality of our deep interconnectedness which has always been there. But we can come in and out of awareness. It’s a dance, not a permanent state of being, but a constantly shifting and evolving relationship with our experience. Like the waves and the tides of the ocean, coming and going, but neither state means that the ocean is wrong, it’s never not being the ocean. By its very nature it is cyclical.

But relationships are hard. It’s easier to hope and wish that one day we’ll just always be in a state of bliss, never having to worry about this back and forth of our relationship with experience. It doesn’t necessarily make the hard times easier to say, oh that’s just part of the process! You’ll get used to it! It’s hard for me to feel myself fluctuate between the awareness of interconnectedness and the delusion of separation. It’s particularly infuriating to be able to see that that’s what’s happening and still not be able to jump out of my delusions at will. But even the desire to not have this dynamic experience, to not have to go through the hard moments is still part of the delusive thinking. Creating distinctions between our perceived joy and suffering, rather than intimately relating with both and recognizing their place in the whole of experience.

So what do we do if the answer is not to fix, to do, to come as we would like to be rather than how we are? 

I’ve been using a meditation app with guided meditations from a Zen teacher Henry Shukman. In some of the recent meditations I’ve been doing he keeps saying things like:

Become aware of your breath and bodily sensations; then do nothing. 

I love that reminder. Nothing to do. Just rest in awareness of what’s going on. Maybe being aware is a kind of doing something, we’ll call that a loophole.

Instead of trying to force ourselves to be more other focused and less self-oriented, it’s a simple noticing and acknowledgement of where we already are. Where am I in the spectrum of Self-Power and Other-Power? The awareness itself helps ease the suffering. Maybe this is what winter is for. The slowing down, the stopping, the not-doing, gives reality the chance to reveal itself to us. Allows awakening to happen to us. It allows Other-Power to connect us to our original nature. And that may very well prompt some action, but not out of striving or needing to fix. It comes from a gentle awareness of our relationship with life itself. It will change, it will shift and so will we. But the paradox of trying to fix is that it only takes us deeper into self-oriented thinking and away from the awareness of our interconnected nature.

I want to make sure that the point doesn’t come across as self-denial. I think it could be easy to interpret this self vs. other idea as thinking that the self is bad. This is not the takeaway. In fact taking these ideas to mean that Self-Power is wrong and should never be relied upon is still reinforcing the idea that the self is distinct and separate from anything else. Broadly speaking Self-Power is reliance on the self. But I like to think of Other-Power, not as reliance on other people, but rather an acknowledgment of the non-separateness of the self. We are a part of Other-Power.

Taitetsu Unno talks about Other-Power as the workings of the boundless compassion of Amida Buddha that permeates all beings and transcends all dualistic ideas. This all-encompasing Other-Power is big enough to contain all our emotions, all our experiences, it can hold us and give us the space and compassion to work through whatever we are going through. In other words, it includes us. He continues:

Through the workings of Other-Power, we become ourselves truly, to embrace our feelings without regrets, remorse, or feeling guilty.

The distinction between self and other disappears and in this losing is finding. We become immersed in our intimate relationship with all things. The hope is that we do not become overly reliant on ourselves, to the exclusion of everything else that is constantly supporting us.

So I keep showing up. Even when I don’t feel as connected. Sometimes I wonder why I’m here. I know there were things significant enough in my life to bring me here, but at times I can definitely lose touch with that and I don’t always feel the same way. I’m trying to be ok with that. So I’m grateful it’s called practice because my practice is disjointed and faltering. I am often deep in my self delusion, but I remember the times that felt different and try to recognize that it’s a dance, a dynamic song with highs and lows and that breadth of experience is what makes it beautiful.

There’s a famous Zen saying, Just This is it. Recognize the breath and do nothing. Come as you are. However you want to say it, I appreciate that we repeat these affirmations each Sunday, because they are the affirmations I’ve had to offer myself recently, sometimes it doesn’t seem to do anything. I still want to fix things. I want to be not sad when I’m sad but ever so slowly I’m learning to do nothing and acknowledge that just this is it. 

I’ll admit this is a bit of an aspirational talk. A peek under the hood of how I’m trying to deal with my seasonal depression. So thanks for letting me come as I am, I hope I can always do the same for you, and each of you can do that for yourselves:

and by so doing find our true selves

surrounded supported

and embraced in

the oneness of life.

Namu Amida Butsu