I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Thursday Thinker, I share a smart idea or theory.
I was scrolling Twitter yesterday afternoon and I came across a sad video about a puppy with brain damage. I quickly moved past it, trying to keep my awareness out of the way of it, but I knew too much already; I had seen too much already. I felt this tremendous sadness and grief take over my mind and my body. I began crying. I tried to push what I had just read and saw away. The images and story kept coming back to me. I tried to escape the suffering. Ultimately, for a few minutes I could not. I could just feel the grief of the world.
I thought of trying to turn towards the suffering, as I learned to do with tonglen practice. I thought of all the animals, and people too, who suffer in this world. I know that pushing it away and trying to hide from it doesn’t mean there’s not pain and hurt and discomfort and disability.
I spent a few minutes being present with the suffering, crying for the puppy and the people who cared for it, and for anyone else who suffers in that way. I thought of the goddess Quan Yin who hears the cries of the world. For a few minutes I tried to embody the compassion of Quan Yin.
Ines Freedman, in her dharmette Being Somebody and Nobody (3 of 5) – The Skillful Self says that practicing mindfulness can help you stay present with suffering:
[Sometimes] it takes courage to be present for suffering. I mean, I know the experience of just being with an itch and feeling like I cannot stay with it. It’s insufferable. I cannot stay with it. But staying with it and seeing it to the other end of it and opening to it. Ajahn Chah
said, ”Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering.”Because usually when suffering appears, the self mobilizes almost immediately. It wants to fix it, escape it, become something else, protect the identity. But the practice teaches us to turn towards the suffering, the uncomfortable, the unwanted, with curiosity, with courage, and with kindness.
She relates this to developing trust and confidence that you can be present for anything that happens in life:
And over time, confidence becomes less about self‑image and more about just being available, available to life, to joy, to sorrow, to uncertainty. There’s a kind of healthy self‑esteem that can be equally at ease being nobody, going nowhere, or winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
Because confidence no longer depends so much on who we think we are, but on trusting awareness itself, trusting in presence, trusting in the capacity to meet what arises.
mindfulness of the trader
I needed that ability to be present yesterday for another reason: a key new trade that I’d opened on Tuesday went in the wrong direction Wednesday. The plan is to hold this position for months so one day’s returns aren’t anything I should focus on. But I found myself feeling physically ill for most of the day just thinking about it.
I probably should have set a timer and meditated for ten minutes. Doing that always reminds me that I can, in the moment, be present for almost any amount of discomfort.
I used to meditate every day but it’s been years since I did that. Now that I’m focusing my workdays on trading, I probably would benefit from working that into my routine.
So much of my discomfort with trading is about my ego — about my achievements, my returns, what I deserve in life versus what I’m getting. Instead, I will seek the confidence that Freedman talks about, “trusing in presence, trusing in the capacity to meet what arises.”
Present for the joy too
Last night I had my younger sister and her son over to celebrate her birthday. My mom and my dad attended as well. We got takeout from Modern Market and my mom made a delicious chocolate cake with chocolate icing. “Sarah loves chocolate!” my mom said, and I realized I didn’t know that about her.
After dinner, I let the animals out of my room where they had been confined. Carlos the cat immediately targeted my nephew for cuddling and attention, and my nephew was more than happy to oblige.
“We need to get a cat, Mom!” he said.
We talked about various eye problems, my macular pucker, my nephew’s strabismus, my father’s many eye surgeries.
Before the event I wanted to cancel. I didn’t have the energy for it. I felt full of ennui for some reason.
I’m so glad I went forward with it. Sometimes, with family, I feel like a version of me that I don’t like, reflecting my history, reflecting memories in which I held my ego too strongly. Last night I felt less burdened by myself, as Freedman describes:
[As] the self becomes healthier, more wholesome, it becomes less rigid, less defended, more compassionate, more playful, more transparent. Our personality doesn’t disappear. It’s just held a lot more lightly. The point of practice is not to create a particular kind of self, but a self that is less burdened, less burdened by comparison, by fear, by the need to constantly prove, defend, or become, a self that can be honest and tender and strong without becoming rigid. The skillful self becomes the unburdened self, not because life becomes perfect, but because we stop carrying so much extra. [emphasis mine]
Being present for every season and its beauty or its grief
Freedman ends her talk with a short poem by a 13th Zen master:
Spring has its hundred flowers, autumn its moon. Summer has its cooling breezes, winter its snow. If your mind is not clouded by pointless things, this is the best season of your life.
Maybe today I’ll restart my meditation practice.