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Naturally Letting Go

Welcome, welcome. Nice to see you all. Seems like the volume is just a little bit loud. It's a little bit echoey. Can we turn it down just a little bit? And then I have to talk non-stop while you adjust them. Yeah, that sounds good. Thank you.

So, happy MLK Day. It's a day of service. Not just a day off, but a day of service. And I was thinking, wow, what would it be like if everybody actually did a day of service today? Something to support their communities in whatever way they wanted. How many things might shift if we had a day of Americans thinking how they might support others? And of course, part of this practice is about creating the conditions in which we can support and serve others, and support and serve ourselves, without making a distinction necessarily.

I do also want to mention the weather, this sincere wish that I hope all of you are safe and things are going well. It's quite something here in the Bay Area, right? There are some neighborhoods that are like, "Wahoo, all this rain!" and then there are other neighborhoods with mudslides and trees falling. Different places are having really different experiences. I saw in the news that just not very far from here in the hills in Belmont, there's a big slide. It wasn't clear to me, I think a house maybe slid, I don't know, but those people are having a very different experience than me living on the third floor and never worrying about flooding.

The Joy of Being Wrong

I'm teaching this course on the factors of awakening, and I was teaching yesterday, and the factor we've been talking about is joy. The students have some readings to do and a little talk and all these kinds of things. In my notes about joy is something that Matthew Brensilver said years ago. Some of you may know Matthew Brensilver; he's a teacher here on occasion and at the retreat center. He talked about something that I just remembered all these years later as a support for the arising of joy: the joy of being wrong.

You might be like, "Wait, what? Did I hear that right?" But there is a recognition that this idea or this notion that we have to be right, or we need to be right, really constricts our lives and constricts our relationships. Somebody quite some time ago told me, "Well Diana, would you rather be right, or would you rather have healthy relationships?" I realized that I had this habit of correcting people, like, "No, it's not actually like that, it's this or that." Quite annoying, I'm sure.

So, Matthew Brensilver introduced this idea of the joy of being wrong. Another way to think about it is the joy of learning something new. You thought you might have a clear idea of how something works or how it is, and maybe it's not what you want or whatever it is, but then you realize, "Oh, actually, it's a little bit different than what I was thinking," or maybe it's a lot different.

The truth is, this practice is a little bit about the joy of being wrong. We have this teaching that there are these underlying qualities that are the root of all of our suffering: greed, hatred, and delusion. We could say that delusion is just not seeing clearly or being completely ignorant. We're delusional until we're not, until we see things more clearly. So in some ways, we might say that we were wrong and then we become right. The joy of being wrong.

The Relief of Letting Go

But joy is not the topic for tonight. Maybe it should be! But I want to talk about this other way in which joy and happiness arise. This is from a sutta, and I talked about this maybe last year. Briefly, here is an excerpt from this sutta where the Buddha says:

"Suppose a person were to take a loan and undertake business, and their business was successful, so that they could repay all the money of the old loan, and there would remain enough extra money to maintain a spouse. Considering this, they would be glad and full of joy."

And then it continues:

"Suppose a person were afflicted, suffering, and gravely ill, and their food would not agree with them, and their body had no strength. But later, they would recover from the affliction, and their food would agree with them, and their body would regain strength. Considering this, they would be glad and full of joy."

There is this recognition that being in debt is burdensome, and when you get out of debt, there's this feeling of relief. When you're sick and you recover from that sickness, there's a feeling of gladness and happiness. When you bring it to mind, there is a sense of joy.

I'd like to read another little excerpt of a sutta attributed to the Buddha:

"One who removes the anger that has arisen, as one removes with herbs the snake's spreading venom, that person sloughs off the here and beyond, as a snake sheds its old worn-out skin."

This expression, "sloughs off the here and beyond"—one way we can interpret it is this real concern about this and that and this other thing. It's a sense of papañca^[1], all these things that we're worrying about. To slough that off as a snake sheds its old worn-out skin.

"One who has cut off greed, as if plucking a lotus growing in a lake, that person sloughs off the here and beyond, as a snake sheds its old worn-out skin."

These little vignettes that I've been pointing to—the joy of being wrong, the happiness after paying off a loan or recovering from illness (some of you may recognize these are similes for the hindrances^[2] that get in the way of our practice), shedding the skin—these are all pointing to a letting go. Sloughing off, shedding what's no longer helpful, what's no longer useful. And not only that, but there's a sense of relief afterwards.

In order to understand this a little better, I watched a video about how snakes shed their skin. It's quite a process. In the video, a snake handler described it, saying that snakes feel very vulnerable as they're shedding their skin. But when they do, and it takes some time, they just feel great. I don't know if we would use the word "frisky," but they feel better.

A Natural Process

This idea of letting go—letting go of what's not helpful, letting go of what's constricting us, letting go of what doesn't feel like it's supporting us—is a natural process. The things I just described are natural. It's a falling away of what is not needed anymore. This shedding often happens because we have a new understanding, a new way of seeing things. We realize, "Oh yeah, this doesn't make sense to hold on to anymore." Maybe there's not even that thought; maybe there's just this natural letting go.

Letting go is integral to this Buddhist practice. In some way, we might say that all these practices come down to this idea of just letting go.

To be sure, this idea of Nibbana^[3], awakening, enlightenment, greater freedom, and peace—all of these are related to letting go. Shedding what's not needed anymore, sloughing off what's not helpful. The idea of Nibbana is to let go thoroughly, completely, in such a way that nothing is left. In fact, there isn't even anybody to let go of anything!

But it takes confidence or trust to do this when so often our lives and our society promote the opposite—acquiring, getting, having more and more. This practice encourages us to look at the opposite movement. I'd like to highlight that this is a natural process. It's not something that gets wrenched out of our hands while we're screaming and holding on to it.

It's not so much about what we lose when we're letting go; it's more about what we gain. I've been pointing to the joy and the happiness, but there's also the sense of relief, unburdening, and lightening up that just feels better.

Here is a silly example. The other day, I was in my kitchen, and I needed to get something out of a drawer. There was something stuck in the drawer just because it had too much stuff in it. I thought, "Oh, I don't need two of these. I can donate this." Just getting rid of things that aren't needed, and now the drawer opens readily. It's kind of like that. Things that get in the way might support somebody else or have some other use, but they don't need to be in this drawer right now.

We might feel uncomfortable with this idea of letting go, because it might sound a lot like renunciation, which generally we're not so keen on. Or maybe it sounds like surrender, which we're also not so keen on as Americans. We don't really like these ideas, maybe because there's a sense of deprivation or a lack of safety. If we were to let go, maybe we would feel vulnerable. We feel like all these things we're holding on to—literal objects, as well as views about ourselves and the world—make us safe. They help us keep the world orderly and predictable in a way that makes us comfortable.

Giving Up as Offering

Some years ago, I heard something from Gil Fronsdal^[4] that really stayed with me. What if we reframe this idea of letting go? Sometimes we see the word "giving up," but that doesn't sound very inviting; it feels like surrender. But what if we think about "give up" as in moving it higher? Putting it up on the altar.

To give it up is to offer it in the service of having a better life, opening up to whatever might be available. By no longer holding so tightly to things, it becomes an act of generosity. We give up some of our strongly held ideas or views about what it means to be successful, what it means to be a good person, or what it means to be a good practitioner.

We're not just letting go of everything immediately. The path we practice and walk along is largely about letting go and shedding what's not needed, but it's always in the service of what's wholesome, helpful, and skillful. We let go of what causes more suffering to help support beneficial, spacious states of mind.

We could say it's in the service of creating inner treasure or inner wealth. We exchange the objects or views that we thought were going to make us wealthy, but still left us feeling an inner hole or incompleteness. Giving away, giving up, and letting go really support this inner wealth. Joy and happiness are certainly part of these inner treasures, and we all need them. They are an absolutely integral part of the path.

The path of practice is not always easy. The First Noble Truth points to dukkha^[5], but this path cannot just be about dukkha, dukkha, dukkha. There needs to be joy and happiness too. Otherwise, we can't really open to the dukkha, the suffering, and the difficulties. There has to be a wholesome balance; humans can't just be with dukkha all the time.

The Buddha never says that we have to give away or renounce our wealth or our personal possessions. Instead, we're letting go of that which is not useful, the things that don't serve us. The obvious ones are manifestations of greed, hatred, and delusion, but those show up in so many ways that sometimes we don't even quite recognize them.

Opening the Fist

Letting go is a gradual process. It takes time to unlearn a lifetime of clinging, craving, and holding on.

One way we could illustrate this—I think I saw Gil give this example with a bell striker—is that one way to let go is to drop it. You just let it go. (And making a large sound is a bonus!)

But there's another way: just to undo our fist. We still have it, but our relationship to it has changed. We're no longer holding on to it. Sometimes letting go by dropping it feels like shoving it away, whereas simply opening the hand means we're just letting go of the clinging. We might still have the striker, but we are just not clinging to it.

Really, this opening of the fist is the movement we practice with anything and everything. We could say that this whole practice is to help us learn how to do that.

There's a short poem from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. She's a wonderful poet and a practitioner whom I appreciate so much. It's called "A Little Pep Talk," and it goes like this:

The swirling ash doesn't try to become log again. The flying leaves don't attempt to return to the tree. The girl can't untwist her genome back into separate strands. The flour and the bread can't return to the sack, and can't undo the kneading of hands. In all things lives a memory of letting go, and a chance to transform into what it can't know. What do you say to that, heart? Good self, what do you say to that?

I think Rosemerry Trommer is trying to give herself a little talk, recognizing that things are better with letting go. She recognizes that everything that is possible or exists now is the result of a certain amount of letting go—bread coming from flour, falling leaves coming from trees. Letting go is the process of going forward, too.

Along these lines, Ajahn Amaro^[6], another Dharma teacher, gave a talk, and while I didn't listen to it, I loved the title: "From 'Let Go' to 'Let's Go'." Instead of an emphatic "let go!" as something you have to do, it's a movement of "let's go!" It's a movement forward: let's go to a place where there's less clinging and more freedom.

It's not so much the objects themselves that we're worried about letting go of, but the compulsion to cling, the holding on. This includes letting go of a sense of self.

Letting Go of Self

As our life unfolds, we have these outdated ideas of who we are. Can we let go of them when they're no longer accurate? As we age, mature, grow, and learn, we might have picked up ideas when we were young that aren't helpful for us anymore. Can we let go of some of those ideas of how we should or shouldn't be?

But this practice points to something even deeper: letting go of the idea of any self whatsoever. It can feel like there's a permanent, steady entity at the center around which our whole world is circulating. If you really look, it turns out it's not there. We have these momentary ideas—"Oh, it feels like there's a center there," but when you look, it's not there. "Oh, it's over here," but then you look, and it's not there either.

This often makes more sense in meditative experiences when the mind is really quiet, but it's similar to when we're doing a hobby we really love—knitting, gardening, gaming, playing the guitar. Notice how there isn't a strong sense of self there; there's just the activity. It's a really enjoyable experience because there isn't this sense of self in the center. We all have these flow states. This practice is pointing to experiencing that freedom all the time.

To be sure, some things are worth holding on to, and some things are appropriate to have in our life, like relationships and values. But it's this movement of holding them with an open hand instead of a clenched fist. The emphasis is on this movement rather than getting rid of any particular object or view.

I'm sure we have views, but what is it like to hold a view saying, "This is what makes sense to me right now. This is my current understanding." That's very different than saying, "I'm right and you're wrong." It's saying, "This is my provisional thinking. I can't see any other way right now, but this is the way I'm holding it."

Letting Go in Daily Life

I've been talking about letting go in terms of Buddhist practice, but letting go is essential just for a happy life. We let go all the time. We let go of plans when the weather changes, or when the person we were going to meet can no longer do it. We change our opinions and our preferences. I used to really dislike ketchup; now I think ketchup is okay. [Laughter] It just happens.

In daily life, we are letting go of things constantly, but often we don't notice it. We do it effortlessly when we have new information or new understandings.

One thing we could do in our daily life to support this movement towards letting go is to just let go of clinging for short moments.

You might think, "There's that ice cream in the freezer," and feel this strong desire, clinging to the idea that having more ice cream will definitely be a source of lasting happiness. What if you just let go of that idea right now? You still have the desire, and it's okay that it's there, but you don't have to do anything with it. You're not holding on to it tightly.

It might be a little bit uncomfortable at first, but notice how strong and wholesome the mind feels after doing that.

Maybe ice cream is too big of a place to start, because eating ice cream is often associated with wanting to feel better emotionally. Maybe start with something easier. You might want a cup of tea or a snack, and simply say, "Maybe I don't need it right now." Just wait a moment. Take it one moment at a time. We're not saying you can never have a cup of tea, ice cream, or a snack again. Just notice what it feels like to have this desire, lean back, and say, "I don't think I will this moment. I can the next moment, but right now I'm not going to."

It's just small moments, one after the other. Notice how the mind feels when we've been able to soften or let go of some of that clinging. This can be a tremendous support. See for yourself what it feels like when you do a little bit of letting go. Let that knowledge be a support for you.

We've been cultivating the habit of getting and clinging for most of our lives, so this is definitely a gradual practice. It's not a straight, linear process. It requires us to let go of our allegiances to pleasurable things that aren't helpful. But maybe we can choose to be a little bit more skeptical about the things we're holding on to. Will they really make me happy in a supportive and fulfilling way? Do they help build the life I want to build?

So, this idea of letting go is not just about the act of letting go, but recognizing the relief, the joy, and the happiness that are on the other side of it.

I'll stop there and open it up to see if there are any questions or comments.

Q&A

Questioner: While you were speaking, I was thinking about relationships as something that is difficult to shed. Sometimes there's an urge to shed certain relationships, but I don't know how to navigate not letting go versus pushing away. I also think about how that impacts other people. If I'm not clinging, does that affect other people in a negative way? Does it cause suffering? So much of the way we express care and love in our culture is by clinging—saying, "You're here, I have you." It's hard to navigate holding a relationship with an open hand rather than... Even just holding sometimes doesn't seem like enough for relationships. When you feel like you either need to hold on or push away, how do you navigate being open-handed without letting the other person fall?

Diana Clark: Yeah, it's quite something. It's love, right? And exactly as you said, if one person starts to shift, of course, it affects the other person, and there might need to be some renegotiating. Maybe it doesn't even happen with words. Often when there's a little bit of holding, there's also an expectation: "I want you to behave in this particular way, and my preferences are that you do it this way and stop doing the thing I don't like." Part of this practice is to let go of that, so they feel freedom, but they also still feel the warmth.

It's not easy to redefine or renegotiate something in a relationship, but there's something really beautiful that happens when people feel like you love them, care about them, see them, and support them without insisting and demanding that things be a certain way. People really blossom under that. We all do.

Questioner: I think I have more of a comment than a question. When you first started talking about letting go, I thought of subtracting or getting rid of excess. But then I started to think of it as a positive. Maybe when you let go of negative thoughts or self-perceptions, you're actually gaining a more abundant life that's worthwhile.

Diana Clark: Fantastic! I love it. Thank you. I could have pointed out letting go of negative thoughts, but there are so many things we hold on to that we're convinced are important, which later turn out not to be. Not just negative thoughts, but all kinds of things. Thank you for saying that.

Questioner: I heard a talk yesterday by a Tibetan teacher, Anam Thubten^[7], about joy, and he talked about looking at the blockages to joy. Sometimes when hearing talks about joy, there can be a feeling of, "Oh, I should be having an experience of joy, and I'm not. What's wrong with me?" Do you have anything you'd like to say about what blocks joy?

Diana Clark: Do you have an idea of what blocks joy?

Questioner: Well, Anam Thubten does, and I think it resonated: aversion.

Diana Clark: Yeah, I'd say aversion. I would also say the idea that you're supposed to have joy. That is oppressive. To feel like, "I'm supposed to be happy" doesn't make us feel happy! These ideas that we should be a particular way are blocks.

Questioner: Could you talk a little bit about how one supports their values in a way that isn't clinging? Sometimes we hear, "Well, just let go," but there do seem to be things I value that I'm willing to put effort into upholding. How does that fit into letting go, while still holding on to the qualities we cultivate in practice?

Diana Clark: Thank you for asking this, because there is a danger in a talk like this. If I just say, "Letting go, letting go," you can feel like it's passive—just let go of everything and become a lump. But letting go is in the service of what is wholesome, helpful, and skillful.

The values that you have can be used as a North Star, and the letting go helps you move towards that North Star. Values like the paramis^[8]—generosity, loving-kindness, mindfulness, honesty, and settleness of mind. As opposed to grabbing onto the experience of them, use them as a direction and have your actions support that direction. Using the language of a "North Star" is different from something you stop holding onto.

I appreciate your question. There can be a feeling that there's nothing to hold onto—which turns out to be true, and can be seen in meditative experiences when things aren't as solid as we thought—but it can be off-putting or uncomfortable to talk about. Thank you for your question.

Questioner: I think letting go is easier said than done. There may be times I feel like if I let go, it will result in an empty hand. When you go time after time with an empty hand, I get caught in a train of thought: "What are the possibilities with this empty hand now? I don't see any, which is why I'm clinging to this thing." What in this path do we cultivate—almost like courage—to open the hand, even if the thing might fly away, trusting that everything will be okay?

Diana Clark: I have a few thoughts. One is to look at the general letting goes that are already happening. When you let go of plans or a view because you get new information, just notice that and you'll start to see, "Oh yeah, this is a natural thing I'm doing already." We're just cultivating and broadening it.

A second thing is that it's much easier to let go if you have a feeling of abundance as opposed to lack. What supports a feeling of abundance turns out to be generosity. Whether it's with your resources, time, money, or giving people the benefit of the doubt, generosity gives a sense of abundance. This is part of the reason why generosity is a fundamental teaching. Feeling like, "Oh yeah, I have enough to share," really touches and affects us. That will support a sense of letting go.

I had a third one that slipped my mind, but maybe these gestures don't have to be grand. As I said, this is a long practice. Just notice when unburdening happens. We tend to be dismissive of these things because we're busy trying to get something else, and we don't even notice all the shedding we're naturally doing. But once you notice it—like the sutta quote of the snake shedding its skin—what a relief it is. Sometimes this relief is really subtle, so it requires paying closer attention.

We are a few minutes after the hour, so thank you. I wish you all a wonderful evening.