The Buddha Is Still An Asshole

I know I'm free, but sometimes I still find myself being an asshole. -The Buddha, maybe

"There are days when I know that I am free and I'm flowing with life. But there are days when I find myself in ruts, days when I find myself falling back, stuck in cycles that get me nowhere, hurting myself or others." -Women's Prison

The Trap

The trap is to make a distinction between free and not free. You oscillate between heaven and hell by thinking in terms of if/then. “If I do (x), then I’ll get to heaven.” You suffer by believing in arrivals and departures. “One day, I’ll arrive at peace. One day, this peace will leave me.”

The distinction of free and not free means that you still imagine that, "If only I was (mentally sound enough, emotionally stable enough, behaviorally kind or selfless enough), then I'd be free."

Every if/then is a mischievous hope to arrive elsewhere.

The Mechanics of the Misconception

The equation of if/then & arrival/departure are perfectly valid concepts, but not when applied to freedom.

Freedom of your true nature is not a matter of condition or qualification. You cannot be disqualified from or fail to meet the condition of your true nature. In your true nature, there is no parole violation, no failed essay marked with red pen, no God of the Old Testament who ousts you from the garden of Eden.

The condition of your mind, body, emotion, or behavior has nothing to do with your true nature. The conditions of these cannot obstruct, obscure, withhold, diminish, suppress, repress, hide, conceal, tarnish, stain, take away, or imprison your true nature. You will not perfect your way into your true nature. You cannot fail your way out of it.

Though these conditions have nothing to do with the truth of who you are, these conditions (particularly ruts, falling back, and harmful cycles) point to a misconception that you are carrying within.

So yes, the presence of a rut calls for our attention, but not in the way that most of us imagine. The rut is not a sign of a lack of freedom. But the rut may be a sign that the operating system of if/then is still functioning. It tells us that we should give attention to the equation underlying the rut.

Instead of striving to achieve ifs to reach better thens, we can, through noticing the if/then equation in real time, take a step back and see that the situation takes place in the here and now.

Instead of trying to unrut yourself into a rutless future, see that there is ultimately no rut in the here and now. What does it mean to see that there is no rut? A rut – whether a mind, emotion, or behavior rut – is being stuck in the imagination or projection of if/then, which compounds into an endless proliferation of if/thens.

In one of its basic forms, it looks like:

"If I take my shitty feeling out on them, then I will feel better."

This becomes a rut because taking-it-out-on-them only gives you the illusion of "feeling better," while the underlying dissatisfaction remains intact. Your if did not actually result in the then that was promised. And now your poor friend is probably left with a shitty feeling too. And if they think like you think, they'll take it out on the next person they deem worthy, and on and on it goes, ruts on ruts.

But if you can see a rut for what it is, as an imagination or projection, that there is no if/then when it comes to freedom, you recognize that you've never really been stuck. Hence, no rut.

Ask yourself, “What other if/thens am I playing out?”

Riding Through The Ruts

When you find yourself in ruts, falling back, and stuck in futile cycles, point yourself to the following two insights.

One, there is no elsewhere. There is no future to arrive at in which being out of the rut means that you have arrived at your true nature and are now worthy of freedom. In other words, there is no if that will get you to an idyllic then.

Two, the experience of a rut is an opportunity to meet the rut from the place of no-arrival. Instead of wishing the rut away and hoping for smooth roads in the future, meet the totality of your experience here, in this moment.

A rut is a rut because somewhere in its distorted logic, it believes in arrivals and elsewheres. "If I do A, then I will feel B." Ruts are imagined journeys from A's to B's. Meet the rut with the insight that there is no arrival to elsewhere. Meeting it thus, the rut dissolves because you see there is no B to strive for.

If we can hold these two insights together, we find ourselves at the event horizon of paradox where there is nothing to change and everything changes – where our true nature recognizes there is no arrival and where the insight of no-arrival transforms the ruts of the mind, emotions, and behaviors to reflect the freedom that we are.

If you find yourself still being an asshole, take a deep breath, you haven't failed, and know that you've been given the chance to plunge into the depths of yourself.