Put a little “Sanuk” back in your life
I write this column to help heal the pain of anyone who has lost a loved one. Eight years ago, my father passed away leaving an incredible and sometimes unbearable ache in my heart. But one recent Sunday, I returned to the Thai temple where my father often attended and found that all the healing I needed was always right there for me just waiting to be received.
When an enormously painful event occurs we frequently turn away from that pain and seek to suppress the emotions or run from them. What we need is to be liberated from the feelings, to no longer fight to suppress them, to allow ourselves to live and, as the Thai’s say, put a little “sanuk” or fun back into our lives.
The problem is that tremendous agony frequently causes us to get stuck in bad places-our minds become frozen and our thoughts no longer stay in the present but are lost in excruciatingly painful memories. Yet, we all know, no matter how much we remember we cannot bring back the person we’ve lost. We often develop habits that aren’t good for us to help alleviate the pain.
So how is that we can get unstuck?-unglue our mind from this imprisonment that masochistically brings suffering?
Pema Chodron a famous Tibetan Buddhist nun, spiritual teacher, and writer describes first what causes us to get stuck and then how we can learn to get unstuck in a popular recorded lecture called Getting Unstuck: Breaking Your Habitual Patterns and Encountering Naked Reality.
She likens our need to run away from problems, pain, and discomfort to the analogy of a child who gets scabies and is faced with having to do the right thing to heal. When we take this child to the doctor, the doctor says this is a rash and prescribes a medicine and then tells the child that he must not scratch. But, just as we all do when there is discomfort, we seek to escape the pain and so the child scratches.
In this analogy scabies represents the pain and discomfort we are all trying to avoid.
“In other words, scratching is a way from turning away from, trying to get away from, trying to escape the fundamental discomfort-the itch-which we could also call insecurity or just that bad feeling that comes over us,” explains Chodron.
The doctor’s medicine is symbolic for the spiritual teachings and practice or that which will help us heal and become unstuck.
As the child scratches, at first there is a sense of relief from the scratching but, then quickly the scabies spreads and becomes worse. Now, the child is itching and scratching everywhere and is truly suffering.
But the true absence of pain and discomfort come when the medicine is applied and the child stops scratching and instead allows the healing to begin. Then if the child wants to heal and has enough sensible care and love for himself, he will apply the medicine and avoid the scratching. Then gradually the rash begins to go away. The urge to scratch dissipates. The itch lessens.
“And as any of us know, particularly those who have had really strong addictions, this can take a very long time. Nevertheless, it’s the only way because if you keep scratching then not only does the itch get worse but you find yourself more and more in Hell, basically, because your life becomes more and more out of control and misery- based,” says Chodron.
Losing a loved one can make you want to scratch all the time-but no amount of scratching will make that person come home again. I have found learning to get unstuck, to leave the painful memories behind and face reality (painful emotions and all) helps to liberate me-the itch is still present but the urge to scratch is gradually fading-and that has allowed me to put a little “sanuk” back into my life. I hope it helps you too.
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