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Bored in the Country

6/28/2013

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Dear Hanh Niem,

A few years ago, I moved to a rural area after living all my life in a major city.  I wanted to be close to nature and away from the noise, dirt, and congestion of the city.  I wanted to be someplace where the messages of our culture weren’t in my face all the time.  I wanted to live on the land.  Well, I did find all of that.  And I do experience peace with some frequency, but more often, or at least overwhelmingly, I experience boredom, isolation, and frustration.  Why have my carefully made plans ended so badly?

Bored in the Country


Dear Bored in the Country,

To paraphrase a common saying, “You can take the person out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the person.”  Having lived in the city all your life, your senses have become accustomed to being bombarded by all sorts of “noise” and “stimulation.”  This can be literally noise or the crush of people moving quickly about, the energy of traffic rushing about, the visual cacophony that we experience constantly.

Regardless how much you may have yearned for peace and quiet and read in books about how restorative that experience is, when you moved to that setting, you, or better put your mind, were not prepared.  Your mind was looking for the stimulation it was used to, and it just wasn’t there.  The result ... once the newness of being surrounded by nature wore off, you felt bored.

But boredom is a state of mind; it is not a reflection of reality.  The reality is that when you are in a rural setting of serene quietude, you are living in a world of great subtlety.  Whereas your senses are used to reacting to brash and bold stimulants in the city, in the country it’s about the variation in the different greens of the trees and bushes and grasses, the change of light during the course of the day, the shift in the wind, the sound of a bird in the morning, the change in all of these things from season to season, and on and on.

These are subtle things which someone raised in the city usually has lost the ability, not to observe, but to find stimulating in a sustained way. The reality of what you are experiencing in the country is peace.  What your mind experiences is boredom.

Aggravating all this is the isolation that is inherent in living in the country.  You have probably made a few friends there, but the energy of people bustling about is just not there.  Acquaintances hardly exist.  You thus feel isolated, even though in reality you may have as many or even more real friends there than you had in the city.  The other form of isolation is that you can’t just walk out your front door and have all sorts of options of things to do. 

So, what to do?  There is no right or wrong place here, no place is more spiritual or less spiritual.  It’s all one, it’s all a continuum to which we should attach no labels.  You have two options.  In the country, to find peace one must struggle against feelings of isolation and boredom.  In the city, to find peace one must struggle against the crush of humanity and its detritus and the force of our culture, as well as the relative absence of nature.

But regardless which option you choose, you have to accept the fact that you can’t have your cake and eat it too (unless possibly you find a rural setting close enough to a major city to allow you to practically access it several times a week.  But would that give you want you want?  I don’t know.).  Each choice comes with a price ... something that you give up ... including this last hypothetical .  It’s a question of which setting, in total, speaks more to your heart.  Be as mindful as you can and meditate on it.


Indeed, acceptance is the key word here for your finding peace and contentment.  I've always found this formulation of the impact of non-acceptance very helpful:

"And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.  When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation - some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that situation as being exactly the way it is at this moment."

With true acceptance and equanimity, we can work to change aspects of our lives without losing peace and contentment in the present.  But without acceptance, your life will be filled with unending frustration and dissatisfaction.   (See my posts on planning for the future as well as my book, Making Your Way in Life as a Buddhist.)  

Also be aware that the fact that you have a voluntary choice to make will make the decision seem an agonizing one, regardless how much you meditate ... especially if you're looking for certainty, which does not exist.  The complexity of both choosing the type of situation you want to live in and specifiically where is not to be underestimated.  Every time you think you have found clarity, you will probably discover a short time thereafter reason to doubt that clarity.  Those people who move because of a job transfer or because they have to take care of elderly parents, for example, have it easy; they really have no choice and just do it.


There’s a line in an ancient Chinese poem, Affirming Faith in Mind, that says “If you would clearly see the truth, discard opinions pro and con ... Our choice to chose and to reject prevent our seeing this simple truth.”  Ideally, through meditation, you will be able to release yourself from your learned experience, from your mind, from the labels you apply to situations.  Then you will be able to see things as they really are without the intervention of thought and intuitively do what you know is the right thing.  Rather than making a choice between this and that.  But that is much easier said than done.

And at the end of the day, don’t forget that all things are impermanent and changeable.  Whatever you decide to do, it’s rarely forever.  So don’t make your decision more momentous than it is ... all you’re trying to do is make the best decision for yourself now and the near future.  Doubt is ok.  You don't have to be sure about something, and in fact, there's no way to be sure about the future, or even tomorrow, so don't get caught in that trap.  View it as an experiment, and if it doesn't work out, you move on to the next one.



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Thinking of Divorce

6/24/2013

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Dear Hanh Niem,

I’ve been married for almost 25 years and am at my wits end.  My wife has changed these last few years.  We disagree on so many things and she is full of anger.  There is no joy or happiness in our relationship, our marriage, anymore.  My life is filled with pain and misery and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being miserable.  I want peace, and if possible happiness.  I’m thinking of getting a divorce (we were at this stage and went through couples therapy once before several years ago) to escape this constant negative atmosphere and find some peace, even if it means being by myself.  Do you have any advice?

Thinking of Divorce


Dear Thinking of Divorce,

I have great compassion for your situation; it certainly is not an uncommon one among couples who have been married for a long time.  Before you take the step of getting a divorce, I would ask you to consider the following.

One often hears people complain that their partner has changed.  Indeed, your wife probably says the same about you.  But people do not change over the years.  What does happen, though, is that certain character traits get more hardened and pronounced.  That’s why it’s commonly said that people get more difficult as they get older.  So your wife is the same person she always was.  The things that you loved her for, that brought you happiness, are still part of her.  It’s just that the things that were always problematic in your relationship are more pronounced now.  And she probably feels the same is true about you.

You say that your life is filled with misery and that you experience no happiness anymore.  I’m sure it seems that way, but I doubt that that’s literally true.  What is more typically the case is that the pain and misery becomes one’s focus, one becomes invested in it, and it becomes so overwhelming that it drowns out the good moments.  Just like your wife’s being difficult and angry drowns out your experience of the things about her that brought you happiness and still are there.  

What you should try to do is focus on the good moments in your life ... recently.  Think about a recent period of time.  Go through it carefully day by day and remember the pleasant or happy moments that you had together.  The good experiences that you shared.  Depending on whether your heart and mind have been hardened to her, it may be difficult to recall such moments because your mind will block them out.  Meditate on this, sit as quietly as you can, and try.  If necessary you may have to go back a little further in time.

Finally, remembering the good person that she is and the person that you once loved and brought you happiness, put yourself in her shoes, think about her needs, think about her suffering, and try to do things that will bring her joy ... they can be, and probably best are, little things.  We spend most of our lives typically focused on ourselves and our needs, regardless of the good works that we do and the care we show our loved ones. It is wearing and breeds frustration because we never have what we want and think we deserve.  By focusing on offering joy to others, we go outside of ourselves which brings with it a huge relief.  

There is a Buddhist grace, part of which says:

   “With the first taste, I promise to offer joy.
    With the second taste I promise, to help relieve  

        the suffering of others.
    WIth the third taste, I promise to see others’ joy 

        as my own.”

Now, as the saying goes, it takes two to tango.   So your wife should also read this and follow my simple advice.  But before you ask her to read this, talk to her and explain what you feel for her, all the good things about her, but also what has changed, and explain how you are going to change your approach to the marriage and your relationship with her.

Don’t expect her to say, “Oh, that sounds wonderful,” or something similarly positive.  Given her  anger she will probably be skeptical, in which case actions do speak louder than words.  Give her some time to see the change in you.  Hopefully then she will respond positively and be open to considering my advice and offering you joy as well.  Normally, when one offers joy, you expect nothing in response.  But in a marriage, a response is reasonably expected.  

The problems between the two of you have obviously been building for quite some time; they will not disappear in a flash.  Hopefully though you will begin to see movement in the “right” direction before too long.

Ultimately though, if she does not respond to your obvious expressions of love and affection, getting a divorce may be the only answer for you.  No one should live in a relationship that is not reciprocal.

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Restless And Unmoving

6/22/2013

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Dear Hanh Niem,

Often I find that when I put my mind to achieving something, just the opposite happens.  When I want to be quiet and restful my mind is anything but quiet and restful.  When I decide I want to make a move or change something in my life, I find that nothing changes and I feel trapped.  Why can't I achieve what I want?

Restless And Unmoving


Dear Restless And Unmoving,

There is a line in an ancient Chinese poem, Affirming Faith in Mind, that says, “Seek movement and there’s no movement, seek rest and no-rest comes instead.”  There are two points to be made here.

The first is that, as with all areas of our samsara and learned experience, we can’t white knuckle change.  It just doesn’t work.  All it does is make the push-back of our ego-mind even stronger. 

If there’s something you don’t like in your life, if there’s something you want to change, you can’t fight it, you can’t escape it.  The only tactic, ironically, that works is to accept that aspect of your life, acknowledge it, have compassion for it.  Often that means acknowledging and having compassion for the fear and insecurity that you feel. 

But say firmly that you have faith that if you plan for the future mindfully, remaining in the present, (see my blog posts on planning for the future as well as my book, Making Your Way in Life as a Buddhist) all will be well regardless how it turns out; you release any attachment to the outcome; what will be will be.  You express confidence that regardless what happens you will handle it well because you have faith that if you live each day, each moment, well the future will take care of itself.



When you apply this practice, you will find that whatever it was that disturbed you ... whether it's rushing around or feeling static ... the energy that was creating that state will subside and you will be able to move forward.

The second is that rest and no-rest, movement and no-movement are not a dichotomy that exists in reality.  Those are just thoughts, labels, that are in our ego-mind.  

In reality there is neither rest nor no-rest, movement nor no-movement.  Instead life is a continuum that is not static.  Regardless whether in our ego-mind we apply the label moving or not, or resting or not, life is moving forward, all is one.  

And as the Chinese poem further says, “When rest and no-rest cease to be, then even oneness disappears.”  When the mind makes no distinctions, when there are no labels, then even the label of “oneness” is no more.  Things just are as they are, as one.  This is the ultimate freeing ourselves from the known, from the tyranny of the past and the tyranny of the future.




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