Solving our human problems ...

When last did you have a problem? Maybe you've already had a problem today? What was it? Work, relationship, health, family, computer?

Whatever it was, if you check there were probably two things going on: Problems have 2 sides or faces: the external problem – like a car which doesn’t work – and an internal problem – our response to that. The two are not the same thing.

To paraphrase something I read some years ago on a site called Kadampa Life, a Buddhist blog: "if someone said something to us like: 'I’m leaving and never coming back', there is the outer problem presenting as the thing they said and the inner (actual) problem of our response to that - which is usually a feeling we don’t wish to have. If someone we don’t like had said the same words, we wouldn’t have problem. If you happen to be a celebrity and that person is a stalker, to hear that might even be a relief."

We can solve external problems by external means, such as taking a car to be fixed by someone who understands cars. But to fix our internal problems, we need to understand their causes, which are not the same as the external part of the problem.

An important part of our practice is learning to understand the nature of the situations we find ourselves in - what is actually happening. It means seeing the difference between the situation (external) and our response (internal) and then being able to sit with it before reacting. In other words, recognising what is going on before taking action.

In our practice people often talk about “Acceptance” as a way to solve problems. I don’t love the word acceptance so much - only because in our competitive society, the word has a bad connotation. People think of acceptance as being too passive - turning the other cheek, sitting back and letting things go. In our goal orientated, Western society, we often feel something more forceful will get better results.

The definition of Acceptance in modern psychology is "a person's 'nod' or acquiescence to the reality of a situation, recognizing a process or condition that is fait accompli , without attempting to change or resist it. Philosophy talks of acceptance as a sense of recognition. Perhaps, if we go back to the original writings in Sanskrit, the word used is Svkriti (Sveekritih) . There is a subtlety or a nuance here: the usual translation is "accept" but it can also be translated as “agree” or “acknowledge”. That perhaps explains more clearly that acceptance is not about doing nothing, but about taking a different perspective as well as taking action in a particular way. In other words, we could say: I agree that this is happening, I acknowledge this is happening. As opposed to fighting it. Embrace the present moment, agree this is happening, and find contentment with that.

As a reminder that happiness does not depend on external circumstances but on our attitude and perspective.

We don’t have to LIKE IT, but we can see it and sit with it.

Pema Chodron writes: “nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know” ... Maybe our only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is NOW, and we wish it would go away fast. But what we find as mindfulness practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from an obstacle, the very same thing will be there when we arrive. Maybe it has a new name, form or manifestation, but... it will keep coming back.

So if we learn to practice understanding the nature of the situation we find ourselves in and practice acceptance, we will be much happier people.

Metta

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