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Mindful Letting Go (1 of 5) Learning Go and Letting Be

So, this Monday, the theme for the week is letting go. I use that term as an umbrella term, a category for a whole family of movements. This ranges from the simple relaxation of the body and the releasing of tension to the full cessation of suffering, which is the end of the Buddhist path, and everything in between. The Buddha has many different words for this family of mental movements. In English, they are translated as relaxing, tranquilizing, calming, relinquishment, release, freeing, liberation, freedom, giving up, and so on. We could add other words in English that belong to that family. Each of them has a slightly different quality and distinct characteristic, making them appropriate in different places.

In one way, the path of Buddhism is to bring something to an end, and that something is our suffering. We suffer because we hold on, cling, and resist. There is an inner, compulsive, driven behavior of holding and clinging. It might have a lot of authority, and sometimes it is there for good reasons. However, with practice, we see that it limits us, diminishes us, and constricts us. It doesn't allow for the full flowering and thriving of our hearts, our minds, our being, and our life.

Therefore, part of mindfulness practice is not just being present for things, seeing, and becoming a little bit calmer and less reactive. It serves as a platform—a means by which to experience the deepest and fullest letting go possible for a human being. The path there involves learning about all the different shades and forms of letting go a person can experience.

Letting go is an ordinary activity. People do a tremendous amount of letting go throughout the day, and it probably doesn't take much reflection to realize how much you are letting go of. Sometimes it is so automatic and easy that you don't even think of it as letting go. For example, maybe you were expecting to have a particular fruit for breakfast, but when you show up, it's not there; it's finished. So, you just think, "Well, I wanted it, but it's not there, so I'll have cereal instead." In that moment, there is a kind of letting be and letting go. The desire is let go of, and it is so easy that you hardly even know it happened because the desire had no power. It was just a nice thought to have fruit.

Alternatively, you might be expecting to go for a walk outdoors with a friend. Here in California, some days the air is clean, and sometimes it's not because of the smoke. You realize that, as unfortunate as it is, you can't go for the hike in bad air. In that case, letting go might not be so easy because the desire is strong. You anticipated a wonderful time with your friend, but with the ongoing limitations in life due to smoke, COVID-19, and other factors, you don't let go of the desire easily. Instead, the desire remains, but it is frustrated. There is anger, weariness, and a sense of collapse—like, "Not again." This happens all because the desire was held strongly. It wasn't as simple as letting go of the breakfast fruit. If you want to be free of that secondary reactivity, it requires a deeper, more difficult kind of releasing of desire, putting it into the context of finding our freedom even within those circumstances.

Life requires us to let go in all kinds of ordinary ways. When we are driving down the road expecting to get somewhere, and the light turns red, we have to let go of pushing to get there as fast as we can. For a few moments, we let go, but as soon as the light turns green, we pick up that attachment again. Even while anticipating the light turning green, we pick up that clinging to getting somewhere fast. You can feel the physiological difference between holding on, wanting, and pushing ahead, versus letting go and settling back in the car. We might stop and rest at the red light, but as we get closer to when we think it will turn green, the tension builds. The foot readies itself, poised to push the gas pedal as soon as the light changes, because we have to get somewhere. This picking up and letting go is part and parcel of everyday life.

In Buddhist mindfulness practice, letting go is one of the things to be mindful of. Starting this week on the topic of mindful letting go follows naturally from the foundation of the past four weeks, where we practiced mindfulness of breathing, thinking, emotions, and the body. This is taking that practice to the next level. With that foundation of knowing how to be mindful and find our way through different areas of our practice and life, the next task is to become mindful of letting go. This can be as simple as becoming mindful of all the ordinary ways we let go throughout the day.

If we're standing tense in line at the grocery store, we might feel our shoulders go up. Once we see it, we take a breath and relax our shoulders. That is a kind of letting go. Becoming aware of all these ordinary acts of letting go throughout the day builds familiarity and momentum. Just as we want to become familiar with the workings of thinking, emotions, the body, and breathing, we also want to become familiar with the workings of letting go. We learn how it works, how we do it, where we are good at it, and where it is difficult. We discover the different ways it is done—sometimes relaxing the shoulders, sometimes unclenching the jaw, and sometimes releasing a grip in the mind on certain ideas and thoughts.

For instance, if you are having a conversation with someone and find yourself leaning forward, so eager to speak that you almost stop hearing them, you might feel frustrated because they won't stop talking. When you realize you are caught, seeing that you aren't really listening or that it would be disrespectful to interrupt, a wise letting go might happen. We start by being mindful of letting go in ordinary life, which serves as a support for doing it in deeper, more challenging ways. It builds a muscle of familiarity, understanding, and wisdom around letting go.

For today's meditation, I suggested that one of the movements in the family of letting go is letting be. In some ways, it follows naturally from mindfulness and is a simple next step. In another sense, it is a very advanced practice, possible only when there is a strong enough mindfulness to simply let things be.

I want to emphasize letting be today because it's easy for people to misunderstand teachings on letting go, especially from Buddhist teachers. They might think of it as a depressing teaching that means we have to let go of all the good things in life, become lesser, and give up what we want. They might think they need to become a monastic or a hermit because the emphasis is on letting go of everything. Some people react strongly to these teachings.

So, I thought it might be nice in the meditation to begin with letting be. You are allowed to have everything you have and to be exactly who you are, but the practice is to discover letting be in a profound way. There is a powerful, respectful way of letting things be just as they are. Letting things be as they are means not holding on, clinging, wanting, pushing, or ignoring. It is stepping back and saying, "Oh, that's how it is. Okay, let me just watch this now and let it be."

Watching something with mindfulness—letting it be—has a powerful effect. It is like the sun shining on a young plant in the garden, allowing it to grow. When we bring the sun of awareness to things that are unwise to do or be, we tend to become less invested in them. Conversely, the things that are wise to do tend to grow in that sunlight. It is powerful to simply let things be and see them clearly, rather than letting them be while ignoring them.

This capacity to let something be is part of the family of letting go. It is letting go of the ongoing, incessant involvement—the gnawing, picking, holding, investing, pushing away, or pulling away from something. It is metaphorically sitting still, having the ability to be present and look something right in the eye, kindly and lovingly. You say, "I see you. I see what this is. In the moment, it's just a thought. In the moment, it's just someone angry at me. In the moment, it's just my fear." There are times when this kind of letting be is appropriate. It isn't always the case, but there are times when it is.

Building this muscle of learning how to just look at things and be with them brings about something powerful. In the deeper areas of Vipassana^[1] practice, the capacity to let things be becomes increasingly important. We no longer act as the agent of change; instead, we allow ourselves to be the subject of change. We allow change, letting go, and release to happen. The deepest, fullest kind of letting go in Buddhist practice is not something you can do; it is something that happens on its own when we have truly learned the full maturity of letting something be.

So, my friends, thank you. I look forward to this week of exploring different aspects of mindful letting go.