Friday, 18 Jul 2008
Affliction - Aversion
“There are many techniques that give temporary relief. When you become miserable you divert your attention to something else. Then you feel that you have come out of your misery, but you are not totally relieved.
If something undesirable has happened in life, you become agitated. You cannot bear this misery and want to run away from it. You may go to a cinema or a theatre, or you may indulge in other sensual entertainments. You may go out drinking, and so on. All this is running away from misery. Escape is no solution to the problem and indeed the misery is multiplying.
In Buddha’s enlightenment he realized that one must face reality. Instead of running away from the problem, one must face it. He found that all the types of meditation existing in his day consisted of merely diverting the mind from the prevailing misery to another object. He found that practising this, actually only a small part of the mind gets diverted. Deep inside one keeps reacting, one keeps generating saṅkhāras (reactions) of craving, aversion or delusion, and one keeps suffering at a deep level of the mind. The object of meditation should not be an imaginary object, it should be reality—reality as it is. One has to work with whatever reality has manifested itself now, whatever one experiences within the framework of one’s own body.”
I’m posting this section from the newsletter because I want to address the issue of aversion in our daily lives. Reflecting on my own life, I often use avoidance and suppression as a tool for dealing with aversion.
In 2003 my car broke down. I made many attempts to fix it but to no avail. It wound up in my mechanic’s garage waiting for my mechanic to get around to fixing it. As a means of avoiding the problem, I let it sit in that garage for 9 months collecting dust.
For me this car brought back so many memories that it was emotionally painful for me to personally resolve its mechanical issues. In fact, I got so good at avoiding the issue that prior to sending it to my mechanic’s garage, I paid someone else to manage the repair process. Yes, this person’s sole responsibility was to troubleshoot the issues and schedule the repairs but not actually do any of the repairs. This was something I could have done but could not bring myself to do.
Ultimately, my mechanic decided he needed his garage space back and forced me to pick up the car. Still not being able to deal with the emotional heartache, I decided to donate it to charity. In retrospect it was still the best decision however the remnants of aversions to the emotions (connected to that car), still remain.
I realize that I did myself no favors by avoiding the issue. Because even though the car is no longer in my possession, the pain and suffering that I experience is still mine. As the Vipassana newsletter above mentions, “Escape is no solution to the problem and indeed the misery is multiplying”. In order to truly extricate myself from the emotional turmoil of these experiences, I must examine them. I need to examine them as my professor used to say, “gently and with lovingkindness”. To first gain intellectual insight to why they caused me so much grief and then to gain perspective to realize them for what they really were, just experiences.
When I can differentiate my own sensations and reactions from the absolute truth of those experiences, I can free myself from the misery and the suffering. I must end the reactions of aversion that are constantly being generated from within me by my mind.
It’s true. You can run but you can not hide from your own suffering.
posted at 3:46pm
