I thought that, because of the focus on meditation and introspection, Buddhists aspired toward a relatively passive, detached way of experiencing the world.
When I knew very little about Buddhism, I misunderstood it in a way that is not uncommon in the West. I thought that, because of the focus on meditation and introspection, Buddhists aspired toward a relatively passive, detached way of experiencing the world. In fact, Buddhist practice confronts reality straight on in the only place we’ll ever experience it: our minds.
It is not particularly revolutionary to point out that each of us lives exclusively within our own consciousness. Every single moment of experience occurs within the never-ending stream of perceptions, thoughts, feelings and memories that make up our own specific awareness, as anyone who gives it a moment’s thought can easily see. Going further, we’ll even acknowledge that we each possess a mysterious unconscious that affects our day-to-day experience in ways we don’t understand.
At this point, you may feel a strong urge to change the subject, fast. Otherwise you might find yourself wondering—um, isn’t that kind of important? Just how significant are these mysterious unconscious effects? What exactly is my subconscious up to, anyway?
In theory, we easily acknowledge the constant, inescapable influence of our own subjective minds. In practical terms, we do everything we can to ignore this reality completely—and it’s easy to see why. Admitting the significance of our own subconscious means admitting that we don’t really have any idea why we do what we do, or whether we’re in control of our lives at all.
Why did you get bored in your last relationship? Why do you feel like you deserve to earn more money? Why does it drive you so crazy when your mother uses a particular tone of voice?
Why did you get bored in your last relationship? Why do you feel like you deserve to earn more money? Why does it drive you so crazy when your mother uses a particular tone of voice? We’re used to answering such questions by pointing to externals—my girlfriend got needy, my boss works less than I do, and my mom is annoying. We take our mental interpretations as fact and exclude them from our explanations of cause and effect, convinced we’re only being rational.
Please. Your subconscious laughs at your so-called rationality. Your sense of rational decision-making is just a trick your subconscious helped you develop, a way to limit an infinitely complex reality in a way that, conveniently, gives you a sense of control over yourself. The true explanations for your thoughts, feelings and actions are so far beyond reach, they can’t ever be touched directly or understood completely. The roots of every conscious experience go deeper and deeper until they disappear over the edge of our awareness, leaving the conscious mind behind.
The bad news is that is that once you start to seriously consider the effects of your unconscious on your day-to-day experience, you may realize that you’re a total mess—your subconscious has been running wild, pushing you around without your knowledge, establishing all kinds of patterns and habits that now determine the way that you interpret every thought and feeling that passes through your mind. Not only that, it’s happening everywhere you look—the world is a tangled network of unconscious minds influencing the bodies they inhabit and constantly interacting with one another. No wonder things are so confused.
There is good news. For one thing, if we can see this much, we’ve already come a long way. As they say, the hardest step is admitting that you have a problem.
It goes right to the edge of conscious awareness and stands there, staring into the darkness.
The mind in its totality is beyond our grasp—but this is no excuse to avoid it. We’ll never understand ourselves completely, but that doesn’t mean that trying to do so is an exercise in futility. It’s an infinitely interesting and exciting project. In Buddhist practice, acknowledging the present limit of our consciousness is only the beginning. Buddhism approaches the mind fearlessly, relentlessly scrutinizing all our notions of who we think we are. It goes right to the edge of conscious awareness and stands there, staring into the darkness. Only from this place can we learn to slowly push this edge forward, allowing more of ourselves to enter our awareness, expanding our ideas of who we are, and increasing our ability to make true choices. It feels good to begin to get real.