I don’t know where I heard
this joke. Maybe Sue Moon’s book This is
Getting Old. I will attribute it to her, whether she wrote it or not!
Two old friends were at a
restaurant. One woman said, “I was just at a Zen retreat on aging!” Her friend
replied, “I don’t need a Zen retreat. I know that getting old is letting go of
one damn thing after another.”
The Buddha’s fundamental
teaching on suffering and the cause of suffering is summarized by the phrase
“letting go.” He taught that the cause
of suffering is desire and clinging, and that the end of suffering is letting
go.
We so often hear about
letting go that we actually believe that we know what this means. If I just let go, I will be happy. But I
think the reality of clinging and letting go is profound and elusive and
subtle. It is perhaps the most difficult
spiritual work that we have to do, if we want to be truly happy and present in
our lives.
We hear the word “desire” and
think of lust or greed. But desire is the deep, endless yearning for things to
be other than they are. We want more and
more and more. We had a joke in my
college dorm, “Too much is never enough.”
This dissatisfaction with our
life as it is may be the single greatest cause of our unhappiness.
Another word for desire, in
the sense I am using it, is clinging. And this clinging is entirely expected,
especially as we age. We cling to a more
youthful me. We cling to the idea of a body that used to be strong. We cling to
our lovers and partners and children. We cling to life.
There is nothing wrong with these
kinds of clinging. It is normal. It is human. But this clinging causes immense
suffering.
It causes suffering because
of impermanence and change. Things change every moment. Things come, things go.
Thoughts come, thoughts go. People come, people go. There is nothing to hold
onto, not even ourselves. Not even our own identity. Every moment we are born
anew.
We cannot remain as we were
in our thirties; our bodies are always changing. We cannot cling to our parents
and our partners and friends, because they will eventually die. We can’t cling
to our children.
We wish to possess that which
we can never possess, because it was never ours in the first place.
Kahlil Gibran wrote:
Your children are not your
children.
They are the sons and daughters
of Life's longing for itself.
They come through
you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
This is a huge challenge to
me. I cannot let go of my child, nor would I want to. But my child is an adult
man. I can no longer have the intimate relationship of mother and child. I
cannot fix his problems and I cannot make his life easier. I can only pray for
his well being. As most parents know, we are powerless. I am not sure after
what age of the child we are powerless, but probably when they get their
drivers license.
So how can we practice with
impermanence and change? We practice
acceptance – radical acceptance. We accept life as it is. This is not giving up; it is an aspirational
act. As we get older, I think we
realize, more and more, that we are not in control. We do our very best and
accept the rest.
One of the great truths in
spiritual living is that we can’t open fully to this life that is right here if in any way we are ignoring or warding off the
truth of impermanence, mortality and death.
Our capacity to live and love
is directly related to our acceptance of change and loss.
However, I am always aware of
spiritual bypassing. Letting go,
especially of loved ones, is very, very hard. It is not done in an instant, although,
maybe it can. Letting go and forgiveness
and gratitude are life practices. But first we have to remember to do them.
Angeles Arien said, “I think
that a reason to do spiritual practice is to commit ourselves simply,
consciously to say, Yes, yes, yes to
this whole process … that we will
undergo anyway: aging, sickness, and death.”
