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Holding, Not Holding On

Good evening everyone, and welcome to IMC. Welcome to those of you here and those of you online. I hope it was nice for you to sit for the 45 minutes in quiet. That's how we used to do it here on Monday nights for over 30 years. But then with the pandemic, when we started doing online sessions, we started doing guided meditations. When I sat down to meditate today, I thought it was so nice and quiet in here, I wouldn't disturb it with words.

I don't feel like I have a lot to say today, but what I do have to say I think is important. So we'll see where it goes; maybe we'll have some discussion. Let's start with a teaching from the Thai monk and meditation teacher named Ajahn Chah^[1], a teacher to many people here in the West. He said something like: "If you let go a little, you'll have a little peace. If you let go a middling amount, you'll have a middling peace. And if you let go a lot, you'll have a lot of peace."

The emphasis is on letting go, and many people associate Buddhism and Buddhist practice with letting go. There are a lot of wonderful associated words, like "relinquishment" and "renunciation." What's interesting is if you look at the teachings of the Buddha about relinquishment or letting go, it is generally not about relinquishing anything, but rather relinquishing the grip—the holding. It's releasing the clinging. We're not necessarily releasing or letting go of the things of our life. Now, some of us might be doing things which are unhealthy, unethical, or unwise, and it's good to let go of those things. But I think the Buddha assumed people were living an ethical life, and so the focus was just letting go of the clinging and the grasping.

It's possible to hold on to something tight. If you hold on tight, it might be useful in the wind to hold on to your umbrella. But if you do it all the time, even when it's not windy, and you become really attached to that umbrella, eventually your hands might get knotted up or start cramping. You can't do a lot of other things with your hands. So it's nice to not be attached to umbrellas, to put them down when it's not raining, and leave them at home. We learn to let go or release so we're not holding on so much anymore.

In English, not holding on anymore doesn't mean that you've dropped something or no longer have it. It can mean you still hold it, without holding on. You can hold something freely and openly in an open hand, and that is a world of difference. You don't have to let go of something and give it up. Can you hold it lightly, loosely? Not burying it or gripping it, but holding it with an open hand.

If you were holding on to a little bird, it would probably fly away; that's what birds do. But if I'm holding on to this bell striker, it's not going to fly away. Maybe one of you has a really good use for this and asks me for it. It's really easy then. Holding it this way is almost like an offering: "Here, take it." Holding it like a fist makes a very different impression.

What I'm proposing is that we can learn to let go of the grip, and then hold the things and the people in our life loosely and lightly. Without any restrictions, without holding tight to anything. Then things will take their course; things will unfold. If it's a bird, it'll fly away. If someone wants a striker, maybe you're ready to give it. If something needs to be comforted, well, it's nice, warm, and soft in the palm of the hand, so you're there. We're not limiting anything. We're not saying you can't go away, and we're not saying you have to stay here, but you are welcome to stay here. I'm available here.

In what ways do we hold on rather than simply hold? One of the ways we hold on is by identifying with things: "This is mine." It's my striker, so you can't have it. You feel you have to protect it. Maybe it's appropriate sometimes to protect your umbrella if it's raining on you and not on someone else, but what about living a life that somehow holds everything lightly? A life that holds everything without restriction, keeping it from being trapped in the fist of our clinging, grasping, or holding on. What happens if we go around with an open hand, picking things up and holding them openly? If someone wants it, do we offer it?

Many years ago, I was spending time with a monk named Ajahn Amaro^[2], an Englishman who was an abbot of a Theravada^[3] monastery here in Northern California. This must have been the very early 2000s. He had a cell phone that was maybe a smartphone before there were smartphones. It did all this amazing stuff—like email—and it cost something like a thousand dollars. I said to him, "What are you, a monk, doing with this big, expensive, fancy phone? Aren't you supposed to be a renunciant?"

And he said, "Oh, someone gave it to me, and I figured it was okay to have it. If anybody who asked me for it, I would give it to them."

I thought about it—not so much that I wanted the phone, but I wanted to test him. I wanted to find out if this was for real, but I didn't. I think he was probably genuine. He was holding it loosely.

What about someone you're in conflict with? What if someone is angry with you, or you're angry with them? The gesture might naturally be: "Stay away, go." But what if you don't push them away? What does it mean to hold someone who's angry with you with an open hand? If you hold on to something like a fist, it's not very friendly. But with the open hand, the gesture of fearlessness in Buddhism—meaning that people have nothing to fear from you—is to hold your hands up flat. No weapon, just flat and open. It is the idea of the open hand, open mind, open heart.

It doesn't mean that we have to give everything up, unless maybe they ask you for it and you want to do it. But in the Dharma^[4], what we're learning to do is something different. We're learning to not hold on. If it's appropriate to hold, hold it, but don't hold on, because holding on prevents the natural flow of things. Things come, things go.

The Zen master who started the San Francisco Zen Center, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi^[5], said renunciation is allowing things to go when it's their time. When things have time to go, then we let go. He was quite happy to hold, but when it was time to go, then the renunciation was letting it go. I think parents have to learn that at some age, the kids are ready to leave before the parents are ready for them to leave.

I remember when my son was maybe five, and he came out of the bathroom dressed like a 1970s disco king. I couldn't believe what I saw. I mean, where do you find those clothes? He had figured out how to slick his hair, and he had some kind of gold necklace he found in our house. I looked at him and thought, "This represents something which I don't stand for." It was just so different than anything that I could appreciate.

But I looked at it and said, "Well, this is what he's done. Who am I to say that he shouldn't do that just because I don't have a good association with it? It's not my place to tell him that he can't dress up this way." I have to keep my hand open. Who knows what direction he's going to go in his life, but at five he was making choices. It's not my place to shape him in every possible way. Parents have a role, of course, but it was a moment of realizing, "Oh, okay. I have to let him go in certain ways."

So, this freedom of the open hand: is that a freedom that you're comfortable with? Do you feel safe, or do you feel like you lose too much? Or do you feel safer and more comfortable holding on, gripping? We might justify it, saying, "Gil doesn't understand what life is about and its challenges. I have to keep my things so I'm safe."

But what are we trusting? What are we not trusting? We're not being asked to let go of anything. We're asked just to hold it with an open heart, open mind, and open hand, and care for it. I love the gesture of putting two hands together to hold things; it's really supportive. It's just love. I love this as a metaphor for mindfulness. We take our attention and come from underneath our sadness, anger, or fear, and just hold it openly. It can go if it wants. I'm not holding on to it, not resisting it.

Just hold everything, and maybe if it's time for it to go, maybe it's okay. The biggest gift we have, the biggest treasure we have, is the open hand. It is the open heart; it is that freedom. To lose that by clenching, from a Buddha's point of view, is impoverishment. Even if I think it's so important to keep this striker, the fact that I'm gripping it is a kind of poverty. If I hold it openly, it's a kind of wealth. If it goes away, I still have the wealth of freedom.

Holding, but not holding on. I think it's a very respectful way to live. It's kind of like the Middle Way^[6]. The Middle Way between clinging and throwing things away. Between accumulating and getting rid of things. Just hold it openly, and people and things come and go in that openness. It's a phenomenal form of respect, reverence, care, and generosity to hold other people in that open hand. To hold on to other people tightly is maybe not respecting them. To discard people is disrespectful. But that middle way: hold, but don't hold on. Hold, but don't discard.

That's what I wanted to say today. What do you think of that? Do you have any comments, testimonials, protests, or questions?

Questions and Answers

Questioner 1 (Nancy): Hi, it's Nancy. I have some possessions that are very dear and nostalgic for me, and I realize that when I pass away, my nieces and nephews have no interest in them whatsoever, even though they're family heirlooms. I've been thinking about it lately: what do I do about these treasured things that are so dear to me, and how do I let those go when they're really going nowhere?

Gil Fronsdal: I don't have an answer to that, but what occurs to me is that in that open hand, you might figure out how to let go, how to give it, or how to do something. They represent something for you, and what they represent is different than what the object itself is. Maybe there's some way, with the open hand, to preserve, protect, and stay close to what they represent in your heart. That will actually better allow these memories or associations to live in you than the object itself. Maybe it's easier then to figure out a good home for the objects. Doing a ritual that transfers the memories or the associations from the objects to your heart might help. What does that sound like?

Questioner 1: Sounds good.

Questioner 2: How do we adapt this way of thinking to our day-to-day life? I think the idea is great, but just living life, it's kind of hard to understand when you are grasping onto an object or idea versus just keeping it open, as you've mentioned.

Gil Fronsdal: An example happened recently to me. In the last month, I went to a restaurant and there was something strange about how the credit card payment worked. I didn't get any receipt. So I wondered about that: "What's that about? Am I in trouble? Am I going to be charged a whole bunch?" I checked my credit card account online eventually, but I didn't do the usual things I would have done years ago, which was get anxious that somebody could take advantage of me.

I was like, "Okay, well, let's see what happens. What happens if they charge me twice as much as they're supposed to do? Do I need to get worried or upset, or feel the injustice of that? What should be my role?" I didn't have answers to those questions, but those questions existed with me feeling very relaxed about it. Was that appropriate? Or should I have gotten anxious, rushed back, and said, "Hey, something's wrong here, I didn't get a receipt"? I also didn't sign that little slip you set aside when you use credit cards.

I don't know if that answers your question, but that's what occurred to me. I think it's a very different way of living. At one point in my life, I would have referred to it as living a life of trust. But now I don't think of it as trust anymore; I just think of it as freedom.

Questioner 3: Do you have any suggestions for if you feel like you're the one being grasped? Like, if you're the person being grasped by your family or friends, and they sort of hurt you sometimes. What do you do then?

Gil Fronsdal: Ideally, in my world at least, you would have friends that you can talk honestly with. If you can't have an honest conversation, maybe that's a sign to reevaluate the friendship. An honest conversation might look like this: "I've noticed for some time now that you're really attached to me, grasping onto me, or holding on. We have a friendship and I value you, and I can imagine you have a need for companionship, but it's also hard for me. I feel limited and boxed in. I wonder if we can have a conversation about this and find a way together that works for both of us."

That would be my inclination, because I put a tremendous value on honest communication. How does that sound?

Questioner 3: That sounds good. That sounds helpful.

Gil Fronsdal: Good. It's hard. Not everyone wants to have that kind of honesty in communication. It's difficult for people. So for people to whom it's a foreign idea to have such open, frank conversations, you have to come at it a little bit slowly and carefully, and work into it rather than just saying, "Let's sit down and be honest."

Being able to learn the skill of these kinds of conversations was actually my introduction to the spiritual life. It was witnessing these kinds of conversations. When I was 20 or 21, I lived at the largest hippie commune in the United States. It was about 800 people in Tennessee, called The Farm. It was a spiritual commune of sorts. They had gotten their start in spirituality through LSD, but when they moved to Tennessee, taking LSD didn't work so much there. So they had to figure out something different—something as powerful as LSD. The powerful thing they discovered was honesty.

When I went there and stayed for a while, I stayed because I saw the amazing honesty between people who were there, and how they worked all kinds of things out. It was so inspiring to me. Because it was a spiritual community, I got a sense that spiritual life could be this way, and that inspired me.

Questioner 3: I think that's really helpful. I've always believed in honest communication, I think I just need to slow my delivery.

Questioner 4: Your first examples of the beautiful imagery of an open hand were very clear to me. The very first one you gave was an open hand with the striker, and that seemed very comfortable because that's a neutral object to me. I may have one, I may have two, I can get another one easily. So certainly I can do this, and it may leave my hand. Similarly with the bird, it wasn't neutral, but it was the nature of the object that the right thing to do was to open and let it go.

But if something is so personal—not even of high value, perhaps like Nancy's treasured objects, or something so emotional like anger you would feel toward someone—the thought of opening up and expecting that to just leave... certainly no one's going to take it from me, it's not very valuable to anyone else. Why is that feeling so different than the bird or the striker?

Gil Fronsdal: Do you have any ideas? Because it's a very personal question, I want to see if you have any for yourself.

Questioner 4: It's just the intensity of the creation that it is from me. It seems to have high value, and it may be anger on one day, but it may also be something about my self-image. It just seems to be so much about me.

Gil Fronsdal: There's a wonderful saying I've learned from Buddhism: if there's a gap between the ideal and the actual—a gap between what we idealize things to be and what's actually going on—study the actual. So you've heard these teachings and ideas today, and now you're asking about this intensity that is so important and valuable for you. Study why it's valuable.

Maybe that means you haven't really looked at yourself. What's really going on? Why is it valuable? What are you trying to do? What are you afraid of? That's where you find the answers for yourself. So if the ideal is to be like this open hand, and you can't do it in some areas of your life, that's okay. That becomes where your practice goes. Then you discover something. I can't tell you what you'll discover, but it will be something useful.

I thought at the beginning when you were speaking that you were going to maybe ask something else: "What if what I have is really valuable, and someone asks for it? What do I do then?" Take this bell and the striker. We've had it here for almost 20 years. I remember very fondly the person who gave it to us as a gift. We came to sit here, and it has sat in this room for years. For me, I have this wonderful association. It's important. The connection to that person and all the years we've been here has value.

So if you came and said, "I think I'd like that striker," I'd say, "Well, let me tell you a little bit before I give it to you. This is not any old striker; this actually has a lot of value because of the memories, associations, and background here. I don't know, I mean, I'm happy enough to give it to you, but what if I go buy you a different striker? Would that be okay?" I would explain to you what it means to me, and then you might say, "Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, well then I don't want it."

Many years ago, I had a Zen teacher. I asked him for a time to meet with him to talk about practice. Back then, people had datebooks. His response to me asking if he had time to meet wasn't to face me and say, "I can't meet you in the next week, you have to wait." Instead, he came around shoulder-to-shoulder next to me, brought out his datebook, and put it between us so we could both see his schedule. Let's look at this together. It was obvious he couldn't meet with me right then, but it wasn't me versus him. It wasn't oppositional: "Why doesn't he care for me? Why is he putting me off two weeks?" It was done cooperatively.

This idea of doing things cooperatively, letting people know what's happening for you—"This striker is valuable. Do you still want it?"—that's what I thought you were getting ready to ask.

Questioner 5: Gil, I'm wondering if you can talk about letting go of one's self-identification with one's work. Moving from a place of identifying with the task to a place of aspiration. Is this an identity that you keep 24 hours a day, seven days a week, or does it wane and wax through the week?

Gil Fronsdal: Probably wanes and waxes.

Questioner 5: So what are you like when it's most not there?

Gil Fronsdal: Hmm. Open to more possibilities. A little more relaxed. So, rather than trying to change it, you could study the identification. Another thing you can study is when it's least there, and see what you have to learn from that. That might be enough, rather than thinking you have to change it and shift it.

Questioner 6: It's a little off topic, but I haven't been here for a couple of years since COVID, and I really appreciate being here in this space. I'm usually the one that doesn't speak. I think for me, I've been holding on to my fear of not speaking. It feels good to say what I just said.

Gil Fronsdal: Oh, fantastic. Just to describe your fear that's here and do it... I hear that you're holding your fear, but not being held by your fear to speak this way.

Questioner 6: Yeah, that feels accurate.

Gil Fronsdal: You're practicing what I'm talking about already. That was beautiful, thank you. Come practice more often.

Conclusion

Thank you for being here this evening. This was very nice. I still find it very lovely to be with people. Even though the serious part of the pandemic—of really being isolated—is kind of over, I'm still not actually spending a lot of time with people directly like I used to, so anything like this I value. I think it's wonderful to be together with people, practicing together. So I appreciate it, and thank you for being part of this. I hope to see you again. I think I'm scheduled to come Mondays maybe about once a month, and Diana probably two to three times a month, and other people will come through as well. But lovely to be here. Thank you.