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Unsticking From Our Stories - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 23, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Unsticking From Our Stories

Welcome. Nice to see you all here on a Monday night, on a rainy day—well, it was rainy earlier. I'd like to start tonight's talk by sharing a short little story that ended up having a big impact on me, and I didn't quite appreciate the magnitude of the impact until quite some time later.

This was back when I was working in corporate America, and I remember just being upset or angry. I don't remember the details, but I just remember being upset about something somebody had done. I was complaining to my friend, saying, "Well, you know, this person said this, and because that person doesn't like this other person, they sent this email, and because that email happened, then this other person came to my office..." All this kind of stuff happening because this happened, that happened. I had a whole story of why it happened: "Well, this person thinks they know everything, therefore they did this. This other person never pays attention, therefore they did that." I was attributing all those motivations to these individuals and thinking, "Poor me. Poor Diana, this bad thing is happening."

My friend, bless her heart, said, "Wow, that's quite something, Diana. So let's see if we can come up with another story that has the same facts: this person said that, you got an email, and somebody was in your office."

I said, "What do you mean, another story? No, this is what happened, it is the truth! It's not a story, this is what actually happened."

She said, "Okay, make three other stories of what happened."

I didn't understand. She said, "Well, let's just make it up. How do you know that person didn't send you an email because they had just gotten really bad news from home and they were upset because somebody in their family is really sick? Maybe that's why they sent you that email, not because somebody had said this and that."

I thought, "Oh, I didn't really think about that." I was kind of thinking I had it all figured out, why something had happened. Just this recognition of, "Oh yeah, there are facts—measurable, objective events that happen—but then we try to make meaning out of them." We weave them together. Of course we do, this is what humans do.

There's this person, Kim Hamblin-Hart¹, a life coach. She has something written on the internet that I thought was really great, and I'd like to share this. She talks about the same thing, about how we can make different stories based on our experience. Let's assume the fact that her mother was distant and unhappy. That was just her experience of her mother while she was growing up. She lays out some different stories that she can make about this:

• "My mother was distant and unhappy. She didn't love me, and because she didn't love me, I am unlovable." This is one story we could make.
• "My mother was distant and unhappy. She was broken and incapable of giving much love, and I didn't get the type of love I craved. But I am worthy of love, and I'm worthy of belonging regardless of my mother's inability to love me." That's another story.
• "My mother was distant and unhappy. It was because of something I did. I am responsible for her unhappy life. I need to do everything I can to make her and those around me happy." Another story that could be said.
• "My mother was distant and unhappy. I didn't get the love I needed. She ruined my life. I can never be whole or happy because of the love I was denied as a child." Another way we could interpret this.
• "My mother was distant and unhappy. Because I didn't have a model of how to interact emotionally, I can't get in touch with my emotions and express them in a healthy way, and I can't change."
• "My mother was distant and unhappy. Because I didn't have a model of how to interact emotionally, I struggle with my own emotions. However, I can learn and grow and figure out a way to get in touch with my emotions and express them in a healthy way."

Let's see, how many of these are there? Six different ways to interpret this one thing: "My mother was distant and unhappy." I just love this, right? Because we probably all know people—maybe we are one of them—that have adopted a story around what happened to them when they were younger. This recognition that from the same facts, quote-unquote, we could make a whole bunch of different stories.

There's something terrifying about this, and there's something beautiful about this. With this list of six stories, we don't want to say that one is right and one is wrong. That's not at all what we're talking about here. It's irrelevant whether they are right or wrong; they are just a way we might interpret to make meaning of our experience. Some of them are more helpful for us to have a big, full, rich, beautiful life, and some of them are less helpful.

Whatever story we adopt, whichever story we believe, becomes the truth for us. It becomes the way we view the world, the way we interpret our other experiences, the way we judge our own capabilities, and how we decide whether the world is safe or unsafe.

So we might ask, what is this story-making? As humans, we are driven to make sense, to make meaning of our emotions and our experiences. I remember being on a long retreat for many months, and the mind was getting really quiet. I started to see: oh yep, there'd be a thought, and then maybe a physical sensation, and then maybe another physical sensation, and then I could just watch how I was tying all these things together to make it mean something. But I also noticed that making the meaning is extra. Actually, it doesn't have to happen. We feel pulled to do it, but we don't have to make a meaning, believe it, hold onto it, and say, "This is true."

Instead, we can say, "Well, this is kind of what makes sense to me right now. This is my provisional understanding. This is my hypothesis. This is what makes sense to me at this moment." That's opposed to saying, "This is the truth, this is how it is," and then not even thinking about it, just continuing on with that assumption, which might not be so helpful for us.

These meanings are expressed as our beliefs, our perspectives, our attitudes, our biases, our mindsets, our views. All these things get influenced by the stories, the ways we knit together experiences to make a narrative. We might say that these stories turn into the ways we evaluate or judge experiences, things, and people, and the way we justify our behavior. Stories kind of implicitly say, "This is good and that's bad; this is better, that's worse." So much of our life might be constricted by this idea of "this is good and that's bad; I can do this, I can't do that; I'm good, I'm bad," without recognizing that those feelings are based on experiences we had and the meaning we created out of them.

I would say that much of what we take as culture and civilization is about these stories. Because this is what humans do, it's not a problem. We have personal stories, but we also have societal and cultural stories. A big part of what civilization or culture is, is this collection of stories.

We might even say that in these modern, contemporary times, we are often stuck in our stories. Maybe as a culture, we are as committed to our stories as ever—maybe even more. We are holding onto them so tightly, refusing to even entertain the idea that, in fact, they might be stories.

We can see this showing up in so many different ways. Look at social media. There are platforms specifically designed so you can have a curated story that people think about you. You have this story about yourself that you're going to show the world. "In order to be a good person, a valuable person, a lovable person, I need to curate what I'm going to show."

Or look at conspiracy theories. That's a way in which people make stories and try to make sense of events in a way that makes them feel better. Even when there is conflicting information, these conspiracy theories can really take hold, and people eschew things that don't support them. Identity politics is a part of this, too. "Us versus them, me versus you. I'm like this and you're not like this." Whatever it is, it's a way in which we as a community, as a culture, are holding on tightly to our stories.

Maybe it's partly because we are getting exposed to so many different stories than we did 100 years ago. Before the internet, we weren't exposed to so many different stories, and we probably were surrounded more often by people similar to us. So the whole idea of a "story" maybe didn't even make sense.

There's a way in which the story promises truth and certainty. That promises some security: "Oh yeah, okay, this is true. I can rest here knowing this. I don't have to have any doubt. I don't have to wonder about things. I can feel secure. I can feel safe here in this story." We want big master stories that explain everything. It's frightening to think, "This doesn't make sense. Wait, I thought things were this way, and it turns out they're another way."

I can speak from my own experience. Many of you know I'm trained as a scientist. I worked as a scientist for quite some time, spent my days in a research laboratory wearing a white coat, gloves, test tubes, the whole thing. And then, I had some glimpses in meditative experiences. I thought, "Oh, that doesn't fit in my worldview." It was very uncomfortable. "Wait, how do I hold this? How does this make sense?" And here I am, years later. I'm no longer working as a scientist, but here as a Dharma² teacher.

But it's uncomfortable. We want stories that promise truth and certainty. But those promises never deliver. The truth and the certainty that we're looking for aren't showing up in the way we would like. We want things to be constant and reliable and always there, but things change. We all know this, a part of us always knows this. There's nothing that's always reliable. Somehow we want to know the master story, the one true story that's going to explain all the other stories. We might even say that essential to this master story is the denial that it is a story. "No, no, no, this is the truth, it's not a story."

And so, what is the story that Buddhists have about stories? Of course, Buddhists aren't immune from this either; it's a bunch of humans. The story that Buddhism has is that you shouldn't be deluded by stories. Don't believe everything that you think. There's a way in which we can see through the beliefs, the subtle narratives, and the obvious narratives.

Especially in this tradition, there's a story that gets told a lot, which I really like. The Buddha says the Dharma is like a raft. It can take you from this shore of the water, where it feels scary and uncertain, to the other side. You can have the sense that over there on the other side of this raging river, there will be some safety. "If I just get over there, it'll be safe."

The Buddha is saying there is some safety, but it's not the way we think it is. The Dharma is a raft that carries us to the other side. But when we get there, do we think, "Wow, this raft was really helpful. Okay, I think I'm going to take this with me wherever I go," and we put it on our shoulder and just carry this raft around wherever we go on the land? No, that would be silly. This is a recognition that even the Dharma takes us to the other side, but even something like that, we can't hold on to. It's not there in a stable, constant way that we may sometimes wish.

Recognizing that things are stories, that we have narratives or views, can be really frightening, but it also can be really liberating. It can help bring us some freedom.

Some of the stories we use are about who I am as a person: "I'm the one that's like this, I'm the one that's not like that." I said that I was trained as a scientist and I worked as a scientist. That's a little bit different than saying, "I am a scientist." I used to definitely think I was a scientist through and through, but then I recognized, "No, I was trained, and I lived that life." But that's different than just taking it on board. Or that I'm a Dharma teacher. Sometimes I sit here on Monday nights and give Dharma talks. Other times I'm not a Dharma teacher; I'm a grocery shopper, a dishwasher, a vacuumer, these types of things. We all have identities that shift and change. Some of them shift really slowly over time, maybe some of them shift really quickly.

David Loy³, a Zen teacher, writes, "One meaning of freedom is the opportunity to act out the story I identify with." I appreciate this very much. "I identify this way, and this is how I want to show up in the world." Not everywhere in the world can you do that, but that's one type of freedom. Another type of freedom is the ability to change stories and my role within them. It's the ability to move from being a scripted character to being the co-author of my life, along with society and our communities.

Here's a third type of freedom—this is what the Buddhists are pointing to. It results from understanding how stories construct and constrict my possibilities. Sometimes we might think, "Well, I'm a person like this, therefore I can't do that. I'm trained as a scientist, therefore I'll never be a great artist." Who knows? I haven't tried it yet. The stories we make are based on facts, but sometimes they are constricting us in ways we don't even recognize.

There's real freedom in recognizing, "Oh yeah, there's a story that's getting created." Maybe it's a story that supports me, but maybe it constricts me. So we just hold them lightly instead of insisting they are the truth. Because the truth is, very often the stories don't really help us in the way we want them to. They might help us keep our life on an even keel as we're making sense of our experiences, but they seldom offer new insights about how to understand the world. They seldom offer greater clarity. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't offer much well-being. There's a way they diminish us.

Stories really bubble up, get created, or constructed when we're feeling agitated, unwell, bothered, or disturbed. They show up when we act out of habit. "Well, I need to do this because I will always be like this, because my mother was unhappy and didn't love me." But when we get lost in the content of our stories, we stop being present for what's actually happening right here. We stop being present for the experiences we're having right now. We might be thinking, "Okay, well, I'm waiting for some experience to be worthwhile to pay attention to."

Why not this moment? Why not pay attention at this moment? It turns out real freedom is here. If we're always waiting for the perfect conditions, or for that other thing to happen—no, just right now is good enough. There can be some real ease and freedom that arises if we are just paying attention to this moment, and this moment, and this moment.

So what are some ways we can see these stories? If you're doing a meditation practice, do mindfulness of breathing. This is a common practice. There's a way in which we often have this feeling like, "I'm breathing." It feels like, "I'm breathing," as opposed to the sense of, "Breathing is happening." Sometimes we say, "It's raining," but we don't really say what is raining; we just say, "It's raining." That's kind of the way we describe the weather pattern. Is there a way, instead of putting a self at the center, we can say, "Breathing is happening," instead of saying, "I'm breathing"? This is a subtle difference that I'm playing with in language, but it can be really powerful.

Jack Petranker⁴ points to something the naturalist Barry Lopez⁵ wrote. Lopez was on this journey with some Indigenous people up in the north, and he's describing how he would engage with an event versus how the Indigenous people would:

"If my companions and I, for example, were hiking and encountered a grizzly bear feeding on a caribou carcass, I would tend to focus almost entirely on the bear. My companions would focus on the part of the world of which at that moment the bear was only a fragment. My approach was mostly to take notes of objects in the scene—the bear, the caribou, the tundra—a series of dots that I would try to make sense of by connecting them all with a single rigid line. My friends, in contrast, had situated themselves within a dynamic event. Their approach was to let it continue to unfold, to notice everything, and to let whatever significance was there to emerge on its own."

You can see how Barry Lopez located himself in one location, and everything else was out there. The Indigenous people were part of the experience unfolding, allowing what was significant to emerge. That's opposed to making a story and saying, "Okay, that bear killed this caribou, and that happened," and removing themselves. Removing ourselves is the way we make ourselves the center, because everything is viewed from a distance to the self, instead of just the experience of whatever is happening here. (If anybody's listening to me rather than watching me, I'm trying to gesture, including my physical body as well as all the space around me, as opposed to there only being this physical body and everything else out there being separate).

One way we can notice how we tend to do this is with our meditation practice. Just play around with language and say, "Breathing is happening," and notice the experience, instead of having this real sense of, "I'm breathing, I better meditate. How am I doing? I've been doing this for 10 breaths. Yesterday I only did it for eight breaths, so I'm doing better." Just be with the experience. Sometimes we say, "I am going to place my attention on the breath," but that again is making a self the center. So that's one way we can notice the stories: notice the subtle ways we make ourselves the center, often by making things objects where the self is the subject.

Another very different way: stories have a linear, temporal continuity. A led to B, led to C, led to D. That's the way stories unfold, which is part of what makes them delightful and gives us a little sense of security. But if you look at your experience—I'm not talking about thinking about it, I'm talking about experiencing—you'll notice discontinuities.

Let's come back to breathing. Notice a breath. Notice another breath. "Oh yeah, I have to remember to take the clothes out of the washing machine." So that's a little thing about the future. And then, a breath, another breath. "Not like that time I left them in and they got all mildewy and that was horrible." A little flash to the past. And then, a breath, a breath.

If you can get a little bit settled and pay attention, you'll notice that our experience actually is filled with the past, the future, the present. Logically, we would say this one person is moving through time in a linear way, but our experience isn't really that way. If you really pay attention, you start to notice all these discontinuities, and that starts to poke holes in this idea of a continuous story. It can be fun and interesting to notice, "Oh, okay, that was the past. Wow, that was in the future! All that planning I did for 20 minutes... but now I'm back here in the present." Just to notice the shifts between past, present, and future that happen in these minds of ours.

Considering or practicing with this whole notion of story-making is really different than any other practice we might do. Often with meditation practice, we have this idea that we're going to settle on an object—the breath, a sound, a bodily sensation. Learning to notice and engage with the stories we are inhabiting is not so easy. It's not a way in which we can just focus. Because stories are complex and multidimensional, it encourages us to just engage with our life, to notice these little quiet thoughts, to notice these repetitious ways in which we are constructing stories, views, and beliefs.

It requires an openness. Rather than trying to search and find them, it's recognizing, "Oh yeah, there is this recurring way in which I consider myself or consider others, or in which I'm trying to make sense out of my life." It's not easy to do this. It's not something that happens fast, where you can say, "Oh, okay, that was interesting. I expect I'll get it tomorrow morning."

But this is where real freedom is: to notice and see through the stories we have. The stories about ourselves, about the world, about others, about how things should be, how they are. I'm not saying throw them out; I'm saying hold them lightly. Be curious about them. Are you sure? How sure are you about all these stories that we have? Here's an invitation to plant a little seed of doubt about our stories.

It's quite something, because in some ways, we might say Buddhist practice requires enough faith or confidence to do the practice—listen to Dharma talks, meditate, whatever it might be—and we need to have enough doubt that we're not holding onto everything saying, "Yes, finally I found the truth! I'm going to be happy from now on. I got it, I know."

When I first got introduced to the Pali Canon⁶, the early Buddhist scriptures, I was so convinced, "Okay, if I could just read enough, here I will find all the answers." I even learned Pali⁷ and started translating. "I'm sure the answers are in here somewhere!" The answers weren't there the way that I thought they would be. They were there because something just made me happy to be looking at them, but when I started to see that things weren't neat and tidy, I realized, "Oh yeah, this idea that things need to be neat and tidy, and completely comprehensible—that's another story I have."

Unsticking from our stories is a path to greater ease, greater well-being, greater peace. Not completely abandoning them, but being open to new stories, different stories.

And with that, I'll end, and I'll open it up to see if there's some questions or comments.

Q&A

Questioner 1: Hi. It's kind of a comment. I've thought a lot about the stories I tell myself, and for some reason, when I have some happy stories that I consider important, and when I see those as just stories, it feels very light. I still like those stories, but it's sort of a gateway for me to see my other stories—you know, I have some negative stories I really cling to. So, anyway, that's all.

Diana Clark: Thank you for sharing that. Just because we're making stories doesn't mean that the emotions aren't real or the events aren't real. The happiness that we experience—that's real. Those are real experiences. I neglected to say that earlier. When you started speaking, I thought you were going to say that viewing them as stories makes you sad, but you're saying it makes you touch into a lightness, with less clinging. That's fantastic. Thank you.

Does anybody else have a comment or question? I think we can move the microphone down. There we go, thank you.

Questioner 2: In a word, how can we stop telling ourselves stories and start to see things as they really are?

Diana Clark: I don't think we can stop telling ourselves stories. This is what humans do; we try to make meaning of our experience. I think what we can do is hold them lightly. Somebody told me a phrase a long time ago that was really helpful, something along the lines of, "Am I sure?" or "Is that right?" or "Is that true?" At the end of a statement we make, just asking that question—we might not know the answer, but asking the question opens it up. "Okay, yeah, it seems like this right now, but I'm not 100% sure."

So that's one way. Maybe a completely awakened person doesn't make stories. As soon as I'm completely awakened, I'll let you guys know! [Laughter]

Any other comments or questions? Okay, well, thank you for your attention, and I wish you a wonderful rest of the evening and safe travels home.