When Things Fall Apart

Episode 159 of the Secular Buddhism Podcast

Welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism podcast. This is episode number 159. I'm your host, Noah Rasheta, and today I'm going to talk about when things fall apart.

As always, keep in mind you don't need to use what you learned from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. You can use what you learned to simply be a better whatever you already are. If you're interested in learning more about Buddhism, you can check out my book, "No Nonsense Buddhism For Beginners," available on Amazon. You can also listen to the first five episodes of this podcast by visiting secularbuddhism.com and clicking the Start Here link. And if you're looking for a community to practice with and interact with, consider becoming a patron by visiting secularbuddhism.com and clicking the link to join our community.

The Topic

The topic I had in mind today is when things fall apart. Now, this is the title of a book by Pema Chödrön, a fantastic Buddhist teacher. She talks about this notion of things falling apart, and I highly recommend you check that out if this is a topic you're interested in.

I think a really good description of the nature of reality is the understanding that things come together and things fall apart. Pema Chödrön talks about this in her book, but I think at the core of the Buddha's awakening was this deep realization of this truth: things come together and things fall apart. That is the nature of reality. When we learn to see through the lens of impermanence and through the lens of interdependence, I think we start to see and to understand this deep truth that things are because other things are, and things aren't going to remain. Things that are will no longer be, and things that aren't will come into existence.

And again, it's the essence of seeing that things come together and things fall apart, and all things inter-are. I think that's a very skillful, wise way of seeing reality.

Dish Washing Meditation

I've mentioned in a previous podcast one of the meditative techniques I've adopted into my daily practice for meditation. I like to call it dish washing meditation. This process started several years ago when I realized I really didn't like having to do the dishes. So I took it upon myself to change the relationship that I have with doing the dishes. And now it's become one of the key tasks that I perform in the way we take care of the house. I take out the trash, I mop the floors, I do different tasks. And one of the ones that's generally my responsibility is washing the dishes.

A couple days ago, as I was washing the dishes, I finished washing the last of the dishes, put everything away, and then turned around and realized I had forgotten a few dishes that were still on the table. There was this sense of, "Oh, are you serious? I have to do more dishes?"

And it was like I could hear a voice inside telling me, "Well, what did you think? That once you were done, you'd never have to do dishes again?"

But I think somewhere there was this thought that if I could finally just finish the dishes, then I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. Well, yeah, that may be true for a time, but before you know it, it's time to do the dishes again. I had this thought of correlating this feeling of wanting to not have to do the dishes with going around thinking that things won't fall apart in life. And going around thinking that way is a lot like going around and thinking that once I clean the dishes, I won't have to do this again.

But the nature of reality is that if you're going to eat and cook, you're going to use dishes, and you'll have to clean them, and then you'll get them dirty. And I think Buddhist wisdom, when it comes to this overall notion of dealing with difficulties, is opposite to what a lot of us grew up with. We tend to want to do the thing we need to do so we can be done and then not worry about doing it again. And then, okay, now I have to do it again. But we don't have this fluid interplay with the phases of doing it and then not doing it, or when things fall apart and when they don't fall apart.

Moving Toward Difficulty

So instead of running from difficulties and running from things like pain, sorrow, or sadness, the Buddhist approach is to move toward the painful situations and to become more intimate with them. So that begs the question: What does it mean to be intimate with going through a difficulty?

Well, I like to think intimacy is when your guard is down, when you're willing to be vulnerable, when your defenses are not there. And it's a lot like the Buddhist story of the sticky hair monster. The prince—everyone who fights the sticky hair monster loses. Then this prince comes in to fight and realizes he's not going to fight it. Instead, he sits down, talks to it, gets to know the sticky hair monster, and they develop a relationship. And once they are friends, because he's no longer experiencing animosity toward the sticky hair monster, then he's able to get past him and go to where he needed to go on that path.

I think there's a profound lesson in that story that correlates to what I'm talking about here. When we experience these sticky hair monster emotions—like sorrow, like pain—we want to fight it. "I don't want to feel this. I'm going to do whatever I can to fight this. I'm going to distract myself. I just don't want this thing here in my mind or in my heart." And this approach says no. Let's get intimate with this thing and get to know it. Let's sit down. Let's talk.

A Question I Hear Often

This is a question I hear from people quite often. They'll email me or ask something to the effect of, "I'm going through a difficult time. This or that has happened—the loss of a loved one, the loss of a relationship, some form of difficulty." The general question is, "How can these Buddhist concepts help me during this difficult time?" Because there's this deep desire to get out of that situation, to not feel what they're feeling.

And my answer is usually the same. My advice is generally to say, "That thing that you're not wanting to feel—lean into that. Lean into that difficulty, that sorrow or the pain or whatever it is you're experiencing. Honor the emotion that you're feeling. If you're in pain, don't try to push it away. Don't try to move on from it too quickly. Sit with it, the way you would sit with the sticky hair monster that you're afraid of, that you don't like, but you want to understand it. Why are you here? What brings you here? Why are we feeling this? What's going on here?"

And through that introspection, when the weapons come down and you say, "Look, I'm not going to fight this. This is what I'm feeling. So here you are. This is what I'm feeling." That relationship changes. So often we go through life fully armed, defending and fighting against certain feelings and certain emotions. For me, this understanding of when things fall apart—it's like being upset that the dishes are dirty again. And that's the nature of being human, of cooking and eating. We're going to clean the dishes. Then we're going to get the dishes dirty. Then we're going to clean them again. And then we're going to get them dirty, and on and on and on.

And for me, that's the essence of this teaching: things come together and things fall apart. And that's what you can expect from life. There will be phases and stages of things coming together, and phases and stages of things falling apart.

Looking Back at Our Own Lives

I'm sure you can look back and see this in your own life. I've looked back recently. In the last year, I've seen very clearly these instances of things falling apart and things coming together—beautiful, fun experiences and really difficult, sorrowful experiences.

Within the last six months alone, I've had the loss of my good friend Dustin, the loss of my dad to cancer. I took a spill on my Onewheel and separated my shoulder, and suddenly I wasn't able to fly. Then after about four weeks of physical therapy and work, I was able to take my mom up for her first tandem flight when our family was in Moab. And I flew with all of my kids. That was a very real high—a moment of things coming together, followed by a moment of things falling apart.

Our community, where I live, experienced a pretty tragic loss last weekend. One of the high schoolers in our town was in a car crash that killed him. And the very next morning, a family from the school was driving down to a rodeo event and they were in a car crash. The mom—one of our school bus drivers—passed away in the accident. Her husband broke his back and he's in critical condition. He's another one of the school bus drivers. Their son also broke his back. And you can imagine the heartache from the community. We're a small town. We all know each other. These two bus drivers were my coworkers from when I used to drive the school bus. It's moments of difficulty, pain, and sorrow. It's a moment of things falling apart.

One or two weeks after that accident, I received a call with news that I was asked to take over the role of President of the United States Powered Paragliding Association. And suddenly it's a moment of things coming together—the excitement of what that entails. Yeah, it's been quite a roller coaster. But that's life, right? Things coming together, things falling apart. And then things come together and then things fall apart. And that process goes on and on and on.

The Nature of Groundlessness

What we don't know is what's right ahead. What's around the corner, we don't know what Tetris piece is about to fall into our game. And accepting this reality of uncertainty is exactly what we mean by the Buddhist concept of being groundless—of having nothing firm to stand on. The firm ground becomes our ability to be comfortable with uncertainty and to be mindfully present here and now.

It's like, again, equating this to the game of Tetris. I'm playing the piece that's here. This is the piece that I have. And there is a piece I didn't like, and now there's a piece I do like, and then there's a piece I don't like. And that's it. That's the nature of reality. Things coming together and things falling apart.

How Does This Affect Our Daily Lives?

So what do we do with all this? How does this understanding affect our day-to-day lives as we strive to be more mindful and to be more present in how we go about being alive? Well, for me, my wish is that you and I can find greater peace in learning to lean into the difficulties that we experience. That we can become more intimate with the experience of feeling—feeling the full range of emotions. And that we can step into that world of groundlessness where we no longer anchor our sense of peace to a false sense of certainty.

Because getting comfortable with uncertainty is perhaps the real key to inner peace. It's recognizing, "I don't know what's coming up. I don't know the next things that will come together. And I don't know the next things that will fall apart." But what I do know is that spending a considerable amount of my life, energy, and time thinking that I need to chase after ensuring that things come together and I need to strive really hard to ensure things don't fall apart—that's not the way. No matter how I live my life, things will come together and things will fall apart.

The Role of Intention

Now, I do have to say that because of the nature of interdependence—and this is important—I can make this worse on myself. I can also make it better on myself. I can plant the seeds that grow into kindness, compassion, and a more mindful way of living. But I can also plant the seeds that sow more chaos and more discontent with the way that life is going to unfold.

And the perfect example of that is, if I decide today I'm going to go rob a bank, then I'm probably going to experience the consequences of that tomorrow once I'm caught. That's the nature of interdependence.

So I think it's important to hold space for these two notions: that I do what I can to make it the best that I can, but I'm also realistic to the reality that things come together and things fall apart. The dishes will be clean and the dishes will be dirty again. So I'm going to change the relationship that I have with the process of doing the dishes, because that's it. I mean, what else can I do? I can't just never do dishes again.

And that to me is a pretty profound lesson.

Closing

Those are the thoughts I wanted to share with you. That's all I have for this podcast episode. But as always, I look forward to sharing more thoughts in another episode later. Thank you for taking the time to listen. Until next time.

For more about the Secular Buddhism podcast, visit secularbuddhism.com