A Glass of Water

I have heard scores of talks by Ajahn Brahm over the last two years. In a few of them he talks about "A Glass of Water", referring to how people hold on to stress and why they need to learn the art of pause. While I understand it intellectually and it also seeped into my consciousness over time, I have not been able to effectively practise pause. Then, this Sunday, on my four hour walk on the beautiful Torrey Pines beach, I had my own aha-moment. Such realizations are very personal, and I am not sure if I can effectively put in words, but I'll try. I know these essays are extremely intimate and raw, and sometimes it brings about strong emotions in people. I am very sorry. I write for two reasons - one, to express and share the development of my understanding of how the world works, just maybe someone else may benefit; and two, it seems that there are a small group of people who seem to wait for these essays, which I find very odd but I oblige anyway.

Through the mist, where the land, sea, and air meet, there is an understanding that penetrates

When we hold up a glass of water for five to ten seconds, it is fine. It does not hurt, it is just fine. If we try holding it for more than two minutes, the arm starts to hurt, we need to prop it up with the other hand for support. If we try holding it for more than five minutes, even with both arms, it starts to hurt. Try holding it up for over fifteen minutes, and someone will have to call the medics! And you will be named a raving mad person to have tried to do so, fit for the asylum. But, in reality, many of us do this all the time - hold the tasks we need to do and relentlessly keep doing non-stop, without a breather or rest - and it makes us sick, stressed, tired, and creates a lot of issues - emotional and physical. So, we should put down the glass from time to time, let the arm heal, gain its strength back, and then lift the glass again. The glass is going nowhere!!

"Holding a glass of water" analogy is kind of accurate in a little different sense for me. When I told a new friend about my childhood and adult life and the struggles, she said - "Soma, it seems like you were carrying the world on your shoulders like Atlas. You know you did not need to do that!!" That is right! I did not need to do that. I could have chosen not to even lift up the world, to refuse, to walk away. But I did not. And for forty years, I carried it on my shoulders, bent over and tired. When I look back, I feel very stupid, very ignorant, and very naive. I had complete and total disregard for my own well-being and it was pathological neglect of self. We can go into deep analysis of why it was so - there was this desire to be acknowledged by the people I loved who withheld love as a means to get what they wanted, then there was this intense need for affirmation coupled with having low self-worth, and the list is long. All these years I thought that "there is something wrong with me, I need to fix it". And as a result, I have been leading a very intense life. To the outside world, I seem to have done quite well. For example, I came to the US with only $800 and two suitcases, and today I am quite okay financially. I have lived in four continents, and move 21 times in my lifetime. By my mid thirties, I was capable of leading a $300+ million program of works with five teams working round the clock in four continents, and I played it like an expert orchestra conductor and I thrived on it. Today I run a growing engineering consulting business that has its own challenges. Even my hobbies, i.e. cooking, I do remarkably well because I am passionate about it. I used throw parties that had expertly crafted near-perfect entrees that my guests said gave them "foodgasms"! Yet, I have this strong inner judge that was invisible to everyone but myself - and she is merciless, relentless, driving me to exhaustion, anxiousness, and depression. This feeling of being not okay goes in perfect stride with deep loneliness. No matter if I am with family or friends or in the middle of a big conference of my professional world, deep inside I feel that I do not belong. There has been this deep undercurrent of personal deficiency. That is the glass of water that I have been holding up for all these years.

Last five years have been very difficult, I went through a series of shockers, one almost every year. First I had a near death experience in a car crash; then my mother passed away after a short painful battle with cancer that I witnessed from her bedside everyday for three months; then came the realization that my marriage had been indeed failing for decades but I was not prepared to let go, and which eventually led to our divorce after an anguished and frantic struggle; and with that came a cancer scare from a large watermelon sized tumor in my uterus which led to two major surgeries. It was hard, it was intense. But then, it was like this for almost all my life, really. When circumstances did not create hurdles that required Herculean effort, I created them for myself. For example, in late 2005, my immune system broke down and I was going blind as my eyes were being "rejected" by my body. After managing to baffle five top doctors in North Carolina, it was decided that I be put on strong immune suppressant drugs, like the ones they give to kidney transplant patients, with the hope that it will work. And what did I do? I trained and ran the Chicago Marathon in 2006, just to prove to myself that I can beat everything that comes my way. Yes, it might seem a commendable achievement to run a marathon while being sick, but truly, it was not required. It was as if I have been living in a trance, enveloped by this toxic gas that was constantly wanting me to strive for more as the status-quo was never good enough, and despising myself for not trying harder every time. And while I was striving hard, a part of me wanted to put the glass down. I watched others doing it, and envied them, wishing I could do the same. But I dared not. What will happen if I put the glass down? I didn't know. I didn't want to find out. It was scary. I feared the silence, the quietness. What will I do with all this energy? For me putting the glass down meant losing control. What if I do not have control on my life? Then there was this thick layer of self-imposed responsibility - to make my parents happy, to make my husband happy. I told myself the same story over and over again, that thought process kept conditioning me. If I become an engineer, my parents will be happy. If I came to the US, my parents will be proud. If I got a job, I could buy my husband all the cool gadgets and cars he likes, and afford for him the lifestyle he so desires. If I stay in my jobs I'll secure the green card, and my husband's career will take off. And on and on it went. I lived for the next thing that was just outside my reach and strove towards it with all my might, with the relentless effort I was so very capable of. I lived to make others happy, and too scared to allow myself or my needs to even surface. I had suppressed my desires so much that I didn't even know what they are or could be.

Today on long walks on the beach, I reflect. I see the futility of the incessant running without a break. I realize how important taking a break is. To rest. But how does one do it? I did not know how to rest!! I never stopped to find out! Even when sitting still, my mind is running million miles an hour - into the past and into the future, it can't seem to pause, it is afraid of pausing. The conditioning since childhood is strong, very strong. I have been swimming against the current all my life, letting go and letting the current take me along is very hard. To rest, to put the glass down, and tell myself that it is okay, is not easy at all. My mind is still addicted to the speed - what next hurdle to cross, what next mountain to climb, how to draw the better picture, more colors, more vibrant, etc. While my body is also so used to being exhausted, wading through molasses, it does not know how to rest either. Restlessness comes up like a bed of a thousand scorpions.

That is why I am learning to meditate. That is why I go to "self induced prison" twice a year, ten days of Vipassana boot-camp. To sit quiet for almost twelve hours a day, with no speech, no interaction, complete shut down of all external stimulation except the bare minimum that is required to live, and focus all my attention internally. I watch what is arising, and I slowly train my mind not to get scared, to feel comfortable and at peace with every sensation that arises. Learn to see the fine line between tolerance and acceptance. In meditation, I have seen extremes come up from deep inside - sadness, grief, passion, lust, restlessness, bliss, ecstasy,  jealousy, desire, greed, envy, pride, tiredness, pain, fatigue, the list is long. I have so much bundled inside! We all do. Who needs entertainment from outside?! Look within, and it is better than any soap opera/reality tv show you can ever imagine or any sports arena or exotic vacation or race! You only have to learn to pause and watch as it plays out. This has been the most fascinating journey of my life thus far, and I know I have barely scratched the surface - it is to learn to watch my mind, to see the epics it spins. When a deep rooted sensation pops up, I can now sometimes watch my mind pick it up and create an avalanche, complete with a palpable juicy story-line that is so very irresistible. My extremely logical and analytical brain finds the story and its arguments so convincing that it builds even bigger mountains of it, and together we roll in it for hours, sometimes days and weeks; and then one day it pops. Woof! Gone. I get up and start again.

I got exposed to this technique in 2010, but my understanding and appreciation of the benefits of this practise did not hit home till about 2014 when I was in the thoes of personal loss, and since then I am learning this skill, at snail pace. It is not a pursuit of bliss, not even make-believe resting like a vacation, this is "real" resting. Learning to let go, put the glass down, effectively, allow everything to stop and learn to be comfortable with it. And over these years, my awareness has grown quite a bit, my equanimity is developing too, very slowly. On the cushion, or off the cushion, the clarity is developing and it is really a treat to watch the change. Mindfulness is developing too. It is like deep scrubbing, it hurts, but it peels off and new supple cells come up, fresh and young.

And to all this, one wise friend said - "Why hold up the glass of water, silly! Drink it!"

My Sketchbook of Life

Every year I go on retreats. I realized few years back that if I do not forcefully separate myself from the daily life, I cannot truly relax and reflect. Owning a small business, I often work 12 to 16 hour days and also on weekends. So to take a break that I truly deserve, I usually do a ten-day silent meditation retreat couple times a year, and then squeeze in few three-day retreats in between to decompress and get my footing in the present moment. This month instead of a silent retreat, I went to serve on a Pali workshop where I cooked to my heart's content for the students. It was a great experience, I got to live in a luxurious ranch in Temecula, cook in a very modern and efficient kitchen, had couple helpers slicing, dicing, washing and cleaning after me, and most importantly, I was surrounded by kind, generous, and loving people who genuinely cared for me and everyone around me. It was a soothing balm for my heart and soul. I met some very wise women, we talked a lot, about life and everything else, and I also had quite a bit of time to reflect.

My Sketchbook Of Life

My life thus far can be divided distinctly into two phases, each lasting about twenty years. For the first twenty years, it was a very rigid discipline with no room for improvisation. I grew all right, because you cannot stop growth, but it was within very strict restrictive boundaries. There were no gaps what so ever. Ever seen a square watermelon? The next twenty years were different, yet same in many ways. When an elephant is shackled for most of its childhood, it grows up to believe that it cannot break the chain. That was kind of my case too, I was molded in a specific form and I did not know any different even when I had the opportunity. This is very hard for people to understand, so during this little time-off last week, I thought of an analogy. 

When we are little, we have often worked with sketchbooks. These come with pre-drawn pictures with color codes; 1= red, 2=blue, 3=green, etc. Kids are asked to color within the lines using the key, as precisely as possible. I too was given this sketchbook and box of colors. The sketchbook came from my environment - my family, my school, my culture, my society, etc., each drawing a picture of what is expected of me. And the box of colors, I might say, was my inherent talent and qualities, the specialties I was born with. They come in various colors indeed, there is anger, there is love, there is perseverance, there is effort, there is frustration, there is excitement; the list is long and varied. Each color has many shades too. In those first twenty years, however, the sketchbook was very rigid with specific scenarios drawn in each page with thick black lines. There was no allowance for experimentation. Everything was prescribed and not subject to change or negotiation - my career, my role as daughter/sister/student, my friends, my daily routine. Not only was the picture pre-drawn with clear dark lines, the intensity of the color in each space was also specified with a number. Each page was a year in my life, distinctly pre-configured. My only task was to read the legend and follow the rules, color within the lines and to the specified intensity. No trying out different colors other than listed, no mixing of colors allowed, not even accidental bleeding of color outside the lines. Any transgression from the rules had serious consequences - both physical and emotional, with plenty of tears in its wake. So over time, I learned not to rebel or go astray, mostly because of self preservation. It was too painful to flex a color that was not in the schedule. And because I did the same thing over and over, following the instructions so well, my sketchbook was really pretty. It showed exactly the picture as it was intended, perfect hues, no mistakes. Towards the end of the first twenty years, I started to see the beauty in the perfection, and slowly developed a resigned appreciation of the situation. Everyone admired the perfect pictures in my sketchbook, so it must be worth something. I wanted to test out a little, but the skill and training was in coloring to the key, so there was little confidence or courage to do anything else than the prescription. And I also learned to successfully suppress any such desire to experiment as well.

In the next twenty years, my sketchbook had pre-drawn pictures as before too. But I had somewhat of a choice in selecting that sketchbook - it had the pictures I thought I wanted. A beautiful home with a garden on an island with happy birds flying over it, a conference room with important people making important decisions, a relaxing bench on a hill overlooking the cityscape, wilderbeast migrating on the Serengeti, an elaborate feast set on the dining table, and so on. The drawings were beautiful, intricate, and very well defined with dark lines and fine lines.There was no color key, I could use any of the colors I wanted. There was no one there to monitor the intensity of the colors, that I was free to choose the shades and apply them to the intensity I desired! And I was ignorantly happy. I thought that this sketchbook was totally original, just because I could color it the way I wanted. Never mind that it was pre-drawn, I was just happy about that little freedom I had to choose the colors. And I had plenty of practice coloring and doing it right, so I did well. I colored with all my might, with all my passion, such that every picture was big and vibrant. Every line was clear and visible, every color was intense and bright. Anyone who would have to review the sketchbook would admire the perfect job I did, not a color gone astray, not a smudge anywhere, everything within lines, just as it should be. And there was a lot of praise on how good I was in choosing the right color for each box in the picture. There were many pats on my back and words of commendation. It did make me feel very accomplished and successful.

Today I stand at the edge of the next twenty years. And circumstances are such that this time the sketchbook has no pre-drawn pictures. It is blank, with clean white pages. There is not even an impression from the last forty years that remain on this sketchbook. It sits on my lap, pristine and clear. As I look at my color box, due to the heavy upheaval and intense agitation in the last five years in particular, many colors are bruised. They have been used with great vigor in the last two books, so some are spent. Some of the colors have gotten mixed up with the others and have lost their purity, they are smudged. Some colors are broken into bits, some are blunt and don't have their sharp edges anymore. They are all mingled in the box and no longer aligned clearly in neat rows segregated by their hues as they used to. But the box is still mine, and they are still my colors. I can take a neat cloth and clean them up. I can spend the time to align them according to their grades, should I choose to do so. All that is not hard, it will take time to do, but it is not impossible and can be done. Whatever is left, long or short, dark or light, the colors can be sorted and cleaned up. What is daunting for me is the blank sketchbook. I am being told that I can draw anything I wish, it does not matter what the drawing is, and I can go crazy with the sketches. There is no right or wrong way, or even a right or wrong picture. Each picture I draw will be just fine, as it is. There will be no one checking for proportions or content or match. I can draw a little house in Tasmania, or the Torrey Pines seascape, or a stadium full of people cheering. It is my choice. And, as I sit here with the blank book on my lap, I am not sure what my pencil will sketch. I am scared, apprehensive, not confident, and somewhat clueless. For forty years I have lived with this intense training to color within the lines, to mold to the pre-drawn pictures and do so with perfection; and now when faced with a blank page I am feeling as if I have been pushed onto the stage to get up and speak and all the bright light is on me and the eyes of the audience too, and I don't know what to do! My improv training tells me to just stand up an say the first thing that comes to mind, trust my "gut" and it will weave a new story-line. There is no expectation to worry about, no voice to listen to but my own. But there is doubt, and there is fear. There are ideas breezing through my head, yet it is also very blank. What do I want to draw? What do I have to say?