Feeling Stuck? Good!

 

02.19.2021 FEELING STUCK? GOOD! We’ve all had times when we seem to be going nowhere fast: we’re not sure which step to take next, or maybe we feel too lazy to take any step at all. This feeling can seem especially acute when we are forced indoors by a global pandemic or a massive winter blizzard.  People have begun to complain of “Groundhog Day Syndrome,” where it feels as though they are stuck in a time loop, experiencing the same humdrum day over and over again. As the three teachings in this Weekend Reader tell us, that very place of “stuckness” offers us an especially valuable opportunity to practice. The patterns of laziness we can't seem to break, and the perceived obstacles in our way can all be teachers when treated with the right awareness. May they rekindle your inspiration this weekend.  —Lilly Greenblatt, digital editor, LionsRoar.com

Feeling Stuck? Good! Feeling stuck in your Buddhist practice — or in your life generally — is a valuable opportunity, says Ajahn Sucitto. When handled with awareness, it challenges your sense of self — and everything else you hold dear. Meditation, service, renunciation, faith, commitment, and energy establish a vital context, and the foundations of that can stay with us beneath the personality level when our efforts break down and we feel we’re not getting anywhere. After a while, the doing, fixing mind gets to the end of what it can accomplish and becomes the problem rather than the solution. Then we get stuck.

Looking Into Laziness Rather than feeling discouraged by laziness, we could get to know laziness profoundly, says Pema Chödrön. This very moment of laziness becomes our personal teacher. The path of awakening is a process. It’s a process of gradually learning to become intimate with our so-called obstacles. So rather than feeling discouraged by laziness, we could look into our laziness, become curious about laziness. We could get to know laziness profoundly. We can unite with laziness, be our laziness, know its smell and taste, feel it fully in our bodies. The spiritual path is a process of relaxing into this very moment of being. We touch in with this moment of lethargy or loss of heart, this moment of pain, of avoidance, of couldn’t care less. We touch in and then we go forward. This is the training.

How to Look at a Wall Zen teacher Karen Maezen Miller explains Bodhidharma’s famous practice of wall gazing. “Would you like to learn to meditate now?” I asked this of a student as we neared the end of the meditation class. I was losing my patience. All morning long, she had raised philosophical questions and objections. She wanted to debate Buddhism and not practice it. Time was running out, and we’d barely begun. I kept trying to get back to the point, but it wasn’t working. She had her own ideas and they were different. When we began to meditate together as a group, she ignored the advice. When I demonstrated the postures for sitting comfortably on a zafu, a bench, or a chair, she wouldn’t try them. Sitting cross-legged on a cushion, back bent, her knees floating several inches above the floor, it was a good bet she was in agony.

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