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Courage for Everyday Things - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 06, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Courage for Everyday Things

Good evening, welcome, welcome. It's nice to see you all. Yes, you're welcome to move wherever you'd like to be comfortable.

Tonight, I'd like to begin by talking a little about a story. While I was meditating, I was thinking about the Buddha statue with one hand down. The story behind that is that the Buddha had this idea that he wanted to sit, and he was not going to move until he became awakened. After he had renounced all indulgences and asceticism, he had made up his mind, "Okay, I'm going to sit and meditate, and I'm not going to move until I become awakened." So with a tremendous amount of determination and resolve, he sits down and starts meditating.

Many of you might know the story. Then Mara¹ shows up. Who is Mara? Mara tried to entice the Buddha, to get him to not become awakened. He enticed him with things that he thought would work. One version of the story is that Mara attacked the Buddha with ten different armies, and these different armies stand for different qualities that could cause a person to not become awakened.

To say a little bit about Mara, I wouldn't say that he's a satanic character. He just doesn't want people to become awakened. He'd be perfectly happy if humans were just rolling around in sensual pleasure all day, every day. So he has no interest in people going to hell or anything like that. Instead, he would prefer that they just have a certain amount of complacency, but they just don't practice. This is the Mara character, and he shows up in a number of different settings, often disguised as somebody else. The Buddha will say, "I see you, Mara," and then Mara goes away. Mara shows up to the nuns, tries to entice some of the nuns to no longer practice, and they always see him and say, "I see you, Mara," and then he goes away.

But what I want to talk about tonight is one of these armies that gets sent to dissuade the Buddha from practicing. There's a very creative individual, his name is Ajahn Khemadamo², he's a monk at the Arrow River Forest Hermitage in Northern Ontario, Canada. He's in the Ajahn Chah³ lineage, and he wrote stories about this for modern audiences. I think he wrote these in the early 2000s. If he had written them last year, it would include a lot of texting and YouTube, something like this, but it doesn't include that.

These stories are of Mara writing letters to his ten different armies, encouraging them on how to dissuade this Buddha character. And not only the Buddha character; I would say the letters are set in modern times. So, how to dissuade us today. It didn't work for the Buddha, but maybe Mara and his armies can dissuade us. It's written in a style where, in this particular one, the language that Ajahn Khemadamo puts into the mouth of Mara is a little bit harsh. These are letters from Mara, there are 10 letters, and I'm just going to read one as an introduction to what I want to talk about tonight.

Here's the letter. It's for his sixth army, the army of cowardice. This is Mara writing to the members of this army who encourage cowardice in others.

"My Sixth Army, you have a special place in the task of keeping beings in a state of bondage. You weaken the being whom you attack and render them vulnerable to my terrible aspect. I prefer to charm and delight, but I will tolerate no opposition, and those few who fail to be seduced must be terrorized into submission."

So this is Mara saying, "I'd rather just make humans be seduced into doing something that feels good and never practicing, but for those people who won't do that," he wants to "terrorize us into submission."

He continues, "Physical cowardice is useful in its place, but it is the spiritual and moral type of cowardice that is most suitable for our purposes. Beings must be cajoled into clutching at a sense of security. This is the trick we must play. Of course, you and I know there is no security, and all beings are subject to the awful realities of birth, sickness, old age, and death. But no matter. The dream of security may be a hopeless one, but it is powerful. Beings everywhere are afraid to risk what they have and can be reduced to spiritual impetus by that fear. Encourage them often to not take risks. If they risk, they may grow, and if they grow, they may awaken. So it takes great courage to plunge into the voidness, and this we can undermine. This is, after all, the golden age of cowardice. We can encourage the humans to make a virtue of their cowardice. They can call it prudence, or they can call it responsibility. They will get up every morning and put on their hats and take the subway to their dull grind of a job and carefully plan for their retirement. And by that time, they'll be so beaten down that they will slide easily and thoughtlessly the rest of the way to the grave."

Ouch. This is kind of harsh. I kind of like this creative way he's putting it. Ajahn Khemadamo, up there in Canada, when he's writing these letters, he's having Mara say that "beings must be cajoled into clutching at a sense of security." We all want to have a sense of security. We want to feel safe, of course, we do. But part of this is the "clutching" part, this holding on so tightly. We all know that holding on tightly is not the way to greater freedom. It doesn't matter what you're holding on to; the whole activity of clinging and clutching is not the way towards greater freedom. We clutch at wanting to feel comfortable all the time, not willing to maybe take some risks or do something a little bit different, or maybe even to recognize that we don't control as much as we think we do, or to recognize that old age, sickness, and death are things nobody is immune from. It's going to happen to all of us. But instead, we want to feel secure or comfortable. So we grab on to these things to help us feel comfortable.

And then in this letter to his army, Mara is saying, "Encourage people to not take risks." I'll talk a little bit more about that this evening. But it's risky to take risks, right? And sometimes we just don't feel like we want that. We want things that are controllable and predictable, and we just want to go in a straight line and get whatever we want. But life doesn't unfold that way. We all know that. There's a part of us that recognizes that, no matter how much we might wish for things to be comfortable, predictable, or controllable.

Then this continues with, "Encourage them to make a virtue of their cowardice." These are some of the things that maybe we hide behind. This idea of being responsible, of course, is important, and being prudent, of course, is important. But is there a way in which we hide behind that and not take a little bit of risk, or maybe not feel some of the uncomfortableness?

If we're not going to succumb to Mara's army of cowardice, we might say we need to be courageous, to have courage. So what does that mean? To have courage, we might say that it's the capacity to face fear, to face uncomfortableness, including fear of humiliation or danger. It doesn't have to be the obvious things that are fearful, like being accosted or natural disasters.

Because as long as human beings have something to lose, or have the idea that they have something to lose; as long as human beings are exposed to uncertainty; as long as human beings are exposed to risk, fear will be a part of the human experience. It's just part of the human experience. If there were a life that had absolutely no fear, and it was completely predictable and controllable, then that's actually the life of a god, not of a human. This is the experience that we are having as being human. So I would say the ideal for a human life is not the absence of fear, but can we meet it or work with it? Can we have some courage in these so many different ways?

The stereotypical idea of courage, of course, is the superhero that is standing up to the beast. We might even say that the story I just told about the Buddha sitting down to meditate and Mara accosting him with all of his ten armies, and the Buddha continues to sit. Mara asks him, "Who says that you can get awakened?" And that's when the Buddha touches the ground and says, "The Earth is my witness. I am worthy. I am going to become awakened." So in Buddhism, we have this kind of stereotypical idea of what courage is.

But we might say that part of courage is having the fear that's in proportion to the actual danger. Sometimes we have a lot of fear for things that maybe aren't that dangerous, but our stories, our life history, all these things, sometimes get out of proportion. So part of courage maybe is to recognize it's maybe not so dangerous. And I say that recognizing that that's a logical statement, but so often when it comes to fear, logic doesn't work. At least for me, it doesn't. I am much bigger than spiders, but I don't know, they give me... I can't explain it. They don't scare me as much as they used to, and I can coexist with them, but there's a way in which spiders kind of make me feel uncomfortable. But logic says there's no reason for that whatsoever.

A big part of the Buddhist practice is this recognition of suffering, difficulties, Dukkha⁴, uncomfortableness. And then we might say that courage is in order to be with the suffering, to turn towards it, to recognize it, to acknowledge it. So often we want to turn away. We want to avoid the suffering, maybe it's due to fear, maybe it's due to habit. Whatever the reason, I think having a certain amount of courage is a way in which to just turn towards, "Yep, this is Dukkha. It's really terrible what's happening," and to allow ourselves to experience that in a way that feels appropriate, not to tip us into overwhelm, but in a way that acknowledges the truth of what's actually happening without sugar-coating or pretending that it's different. And to be sure, I'm not saying that we have to indulge in the difficulties and suffering; there are beautiful things that are happening in the world as well. So maybe if I were to broaden the statement, I would say a big part of practice is to see things as they really are: the beautiful and the suffering. But so often, with the suffering, we bounce off of it. It's like when there's a little bit of moisture on the finger that hits a hot iron; we just jump right off. So part of courage is to be with some of the difficulties, to do anything that's different than our habitual turning away or our habitual not even acknowledging it.

That turns to this notion of the courage to overcome this pervasive, but often not really conscious for us, fear in everyday life. This way to notice and be sensitive to the fact that there are things that are risky and fearful because humans are vulnerable. It's the truth. We're vulnerable in so many ways: physical ways—illness, aging, accidents, disease, all these things. Certainly, the pandemic taught us that, right? How many people died. It's heartbreaking that humans are vulnerable.

So risk is an essential component of life. It's just the way that it is, even though we often try to not acknowledge that. But no matter how confident we are, no matter how brave we are, or no matter what privileges we have in our life or privileges we don't have, risk is a part of the human experience. We are all aware of this risk. Is there a way that we can acknowledge that without collapsing, without shutting down, without retreating, pulling back from life? Can we have the courage to say, "Yeah, things aren't controllable and predictable in the way that we would like, and that's okay"?

So often we think we need courage for these giant, obvious things, but maybe we really need it for some of these everyday life things as well. We have no guarantees about our health, no guarantees about car accidents or these types of things. It's quite something. But if we allow the fear to be felt and then to overtake us or scare us in a way that really causes us to collapse, then there are these long-term effects of perpetually feeling fear, feeling afraid. Then we just start having this inability to take risks, this inability to be innovative, an inability to be creative, or an inability to feel deeply, to feel our emotions, an inability to maybe think independently, have a mind of our own as opposed to just following the groupthink.

This practice is asking us to acknowledge the risks, not to pretend that they're not there, and yet to meet them with what I'm calling courage. To meet them and say, "Yeah, there are no guarantees," and to live a life fully anyway, and to grow and develop and cultivate wholesome qualities anyway, even though there aren't any guarantees.

So we might say that courage is needed to feel joy or to experience beauty. There's a way to say, "Yes, I'm aware of how things are, and I'm choosing to tune into and feel joy when it's available, to experience the beauty and be uplifted when the beauty is available." So maybe courage turns out to be something like avoiding despair when we feel like there's no hope. Because sometimes this happens, right? We experience loss, we experience failure. That's part of the human experience; it's guaranteed. And so there might be this way in which we'd be tempted to, as I said, kind of collapse or maybe just to close down and refuse to open up to any new chances.

I know somebody, and it was really heartbreaking for me to see this. I just really loved his dog. They were pals, they were friends, spent all this time together, went for walks together and all these types of things. And then the dog ended up with an autoimmune disease and died early. Oh, it was so sad. And then a year later, just in conversation with this individual, I was saying something about dogs, and he's like, "No, no, dogs die. I'm never getting one again." And then maybe two years later, "Nope, I'm never doing that again." It's a heartbreak. The first heartbreak of having this beloved family member die, but a second heartbreak of kind of closing down and not being open to the joy that having a beloved pet can bring. So maybe courage is the capacity to avoid despair when it feels hopeless. Maybe courage is, instead of wanting to close down or be secluded or pretend to be invulnerable, to have the energy to live our life, to have this energy to make a new beginning. Often this doesn't sound like something we would call courage, but it does take a certain amount of courage to allow the heart and the mind to be open.

So you might say, "Well, how do we develop courage? How can we cultivate this so that it can be a part of our lives and help us to meet this human experience?" Sometimes, I'll say that Viriya⁵, this is a Pali word that most often gets translated as energy, but it also can get translated as courage and is related to the word for warrior. It's like somebody who does what a warrior does, I guess, goes into battle or something like this. But related to that is this idea of courage.

So then the question is, how do we cultivate this? First of all, I'll say there's a connection between courage and trust. They're really tightly woven. And then the question naturally arises, "Well, trust what? What can we trust?" And this is maybe for all of us to discover for ourselves, rather than somebody saying, "Here, trust this, and if you do, you're a good practitioner; if you don't, you're a bad practitioner." I'll offer a few things that some people find helpful, and maybe they'll resonate for you. If they don't resonate for you, it's just an encouragement to find something that's bigger than yourself that you feel like you can trust.

Some people trust mindfulness. They trust this idea, "Okay, if I can be with the experience, then it's going to be okay. I'm not going to get blindsided by things." Or, "If I can be with my bodily experience and know what my thoughts are doing, then I'm not going to tip into overwhelm." So some people trust just mindfulness practice.

Some people have a regular practice of taking the refuges: refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha⁶. I haven't talked about that so much here on Monday nights. Many of you may be familiar with this, but this is the idea of orienting our life towards the Buddha, who we could say represents the potential for awakening; the Dharma, the teachings that can help that awakening; and Sangha, other practitioners that are such an important part of this practice. So, to orient our life in that direction.

Some people trust in the effects of Metta⁷ practice, doing some loving-kindness practice, this warm-hearted wish for goodwill for other people. I can speak from experience, having done a certain amount of this, doing regular loving-kindness practice just softens the heart and opens the mind, and then there's just less fear and more trust, or more connection with others, less being closed.

Some people have a devotional practice. Maybe they chant or bow or light incense or make offerings, something like this. So an encouragement to see if there is something to trust that's bigger than just you. Because this human experience is not always easy, and it's nice to sometimes say, "You know what? I don't actually know what to do next," or "I don't have clarity," or "I don't have energy." And then there's a way in which, dare I say this word, we can surrender to something bigger than ourselves. Because if we feel like, "I have to do everything myself," that's exhausting, and we just don't always have access to that. We don't always have the energy or the clarity or the wish to do that. So one way to develop courage is to feel into what is something that you can trust, that's meaningful for you, and that can help with courage.

Brené Brown, some of you might know, she's a best-selling author, writes, "Courage is a habit, a virtue. You get it by doing courageous acts. It's like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging." So are there some small little things that you think, "I don't really want to do this, this makes me feel a bit uncomfortable"? To make friends with the spiders, I'm speaking to myself. Take small risks where the stakes are not very high. It's absolutely true that we start to gain a little bit more confidence if we take small risks. It doesn't mean that everything's going to turn out great. We might have some failures and some losses, but often we learn the most from those, even though they tend to be the most uncomfortable. But is there a way that you can stretch yourself a little bit to act with courage when things are a little bit frightening, in a wise way, of course? It's so great to practice when the stakes are low because there will be times in your life when the stakes will be high. Maybe it's having a very difficult conversation with somebody, and it may take a lot of courage to say what's needed to be said. But having practiced in places where there are lower stakes will make that easier. Maybe the courage to say goodbye. Loss is part of life, and we have to say goodbye in so many different ways, but to say it with an open heart and to meet what it is that's driving you to say goodbye.

We often come to meditation practice, to this Buddhist practice, thinking that it's going to lessen the difficulties we have. Of course we do. We come here thinking, "Okay, this is going to make me feel better, less stressed," or something like this. Maybe we're thinking we'll have some wisdom or some new understandings, or maybe even some cool meditative experiences. Chances are that whatever reason brought you here tonight, or to this practice in general, you probably weren't thinking, "Okay, I want to learn how to be more courageous." But I would say courage is a part of meeting aspects of ourselves that maybe we haven't seen before, seeing parts of ourselves that maybe aren't so flattering. I know that was hard for me to realize, "Oh yeah, I really didn't handle that well at all." To just see that, whereas before I had felt like, "How dare they treat me this way?" Early in practice, I kept on seeing all these aspects of myself that weren't so flattering. It takes a certain amount of courage to admit that, like, "Oh yeah, I thought I was always in the right. Turns out I'm not as in the right all the time."

This idea of courage is part of practice. This idea, not that we get rid of all fear, but that we don't allow it to shut us down or close us down, but show up anyway. And that we can learn courage by couraging.

So with that, I'll open it up to see if there are any questions and comments. Thank you.

Q&A

Question: I really enjoyed the talk this evening. Two aspects I really liked were the story about the man and his dog—it reminded me a lot of when I was in a very serious relationship and thought, "Oh no, never again, I never want to feel loss again," and then later found the courage to open myself up to vulnerability again. The second part was about Brené Brown and her research on courage and vulnerability. I was sort of curious, how does this practice help one cultivate courage? I'm just trying to figure out how they're so interrelated.

Answer: That's a great question, and I didn't lay out a lot of things specifically, but one thing I'll just say here is this RAFT practice that I've talked about before. 'R' is recognize, so recognize, "Oh wow, there's a lot of fear." 'A' is to allow, like allow it. It's just like, "Okay, the fear is here." Not to push it away, just to recognize it's here. And then the 'F' is to feel it in the body. This turns out to be enormously powerful. To feel the lump in the throat, to feel the restlessness, the wish to run away, to feel whatever it is. There's a way in which when we feel it in the body, it makes it a little bit more tangible, and it's not quite as scary. It's just an uncomfortable bodily sensation. The mind is going to be making up all kinds of stories, and we let the mind do what it wants to, and we're just going to focus on the bodily experience of the fear. It might be helpful to feel the pressure of whatever you're sitting on or feel your feet on the ground so that you feel grounded. This is a tremendous way, a great way to meet fear. So RAFT: recognize, allow, feel in the body. And then the 'T,' I'm going to say, is trust. And the trust here is trust that you don't have to fix it at precisely this moment. Fix it another moment, but precisely this moment, you're just going to recognize, allow, and feel in the body. This is a great way to meet things that are scary.

Question: Thank you so much for the talk; it really resonated. My question is, why do we have this clinging towards security, or really this need for security, when logically there is no security? But still, there is that need. Even in old age, I need to plan things so that bad things don't happen, but I know they're going to happen anyway. But that need is always there to somehow cling to security.

Answer: I don't have the answer to this, like why humans do this. I know that we do. It seems logical that, if I had to guess, I would say evolutionary biology. Those individuals that survived the saber-toothed tigers, etc., were the ones that planned and were able to protect themselves, and so this is something that we've inherited. But I don't have a good answer exactly why. Maybe I'll also say that logic turns out not to be as persuasive as we think it should be, right? We see humans doing illogical things all the time. And I would say, why? Because they feel uncomfortable, and they'll just want to do anything to feel more comfortable. And sometimes what they're doing to feel more comfortable is just illogical. This is my assumption.

Comment: Talking about "couraging," I resonated a lot with the way you expressed the concept of just acknowledging the fear that you're going through. For example, I'm going through a difficult phase in my life right now, and just acknowledging that, yeah, and being with it, versus trying to say, "No, hey, everything's fine." So acknowledging it and then respecting it, and then, somewhat to your point, surrendering to it on a regular basis and trusting there's something else out there that will take care of it at some point. I think that really resonated. And maybe one thought is a book that I have been reading which has been really helpful in that is a book called "The Surrender Experiment" by Michael Singer. That is literally the theme of the book, which is how do you surrender every day.

Comment: You said having your feet on the ground or something like that. Well, when I was breaking up with a boyfriend, all I had to do was stand. That's feet on the ground for sure. And then I could express myself because I'm here [points to body], you know? It's amazing right how our bodily posture has such an impact.