Words&Dirt

“Suppose I have a great meal or a great sexual experience. It is over. I have good memories of the experience but I am disappointed that it is over. Why be disappointed? It was a good experience and now it is over. All good things come to an end. Things change, I change. That’s the nature of things. If I understand and accept this, my attitude to passing good experiences becomes more accepting. It is in the nature of the universe that all things myself included change. But I, this continuous being, had the experience. If it was good, I can revisit it in memory as often as I wish. That’s fine so long as I don’t make the mistake of wanting it again now, that exact same experience. Wanting in this way would involve a cognitive error, wishing for what is impossible: to possess what is in the past now, exactly as it was.

Or suppose I feel angry or guilty because I have been wronged or done wrong. In either case what is done is done, the bad act is in the past. I can clutch to its memory and remain furious or guilt-ridden. But why do that? Let it go with the aim of avoiding similar situations down the road. Remembering what went wrong so as to avoid similar mistakes is fine, but getting stuck in deep resentment or regret involves trying to hold to the now something that is in the then. It is a familiar fact that we can get a fair distance in screwing ourselves up trying to do this. But insofar as we succeed at undermining our own peace of mind, it is because we work to use our powerful memories to make what was then seem as if it is now, demanding that was is past now be just as it was then. This is what resentment is, grasping anger in order to feel it again. We are working to get memory to defeat time. Memory can’t in fact defeat time. But if we pull out the plugs it can seem to do so, and in seeming to do so it can, indeed it will, undermine the serenity and tranquility we sensibly seek. Letting go, not clutching to my self what is in the past, is made easier––in a therapeutic sort of way––if I possess two components of wisdom: first, there is understanding that I cannot defeat time because nothing can; second, there is understanding that the self that so tirelessly clings and clutches to what is over, despite seeming to be the selfsame self, isn’t. To think otherwise, and especially to hold what has disquieted my soul to my breast now is to try to work myself into something that I cannot be, a selfsame ego that can continue to hold in place now what is no longer there. What is it that is no longer there? Two things: the experience that I clutch and the self that had the experience.”

––The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized, by Owen Flanagan, pg. 125-6