Samsara Is Like This: Using Coronavirus as an Opportunity to Face Uncertainty
“Samsara is a mind towards outwards; nirvana is a mind resting in its own place.”
-Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
In Buddhism, samsara is the cycle of desire that keeps us spinning around in our same patterns (karma: cause and effect) across lifetimes. Setting aside any beliefs about rebirth, you can also understand samsara as the cycle of conditioned behavior that keeps you spinning around in circles just within this life: chasing all of these things that you think will finally make you feel happy and fulfilled, only to have those things come to an end, leaving you wanting more.
An untrained mind fails to see things as they actually are: impermanent, uncertain, unable to provide any everlasting sense of happiness. In a world constantly in flux, the ego keeps trying to locate and to make permanent a reliable source of well being: security, comfort, pleasure. Our strategy for happiness is built on a false premise that we can engineer circumstances to conform to our preferences; we keep trying to build the perfect sandcastle, only to discover that the tides keep washing it away, again and again.
The Buddha taught that this is the source of our suffering: not the constantly changing nature of the world itself (life is simply like this), but the way the mind relates to this world of appearances (samsara).
The coronavirus reminds us of the samsaric nature of the human condition, for the essence of our current predicament is in a basic sense nothing new. Humanity has been through this cycle of pandemics many times before; the coronavirus is only the latest iteration and it won’t be the last pandemic humans have to deal with. These past several weeks, our lives have been upended, and more than anything else the uncertainty is what’s driving us mad.
Life is reminding us how powerless we are in the grand scheme of things.
This crisis also can help us to learn that true happiness and peace of mind has far less to do with outside circumstances, but rather comes from how the mind is relating to whatever is happening in the present moment.
For example, how many people right now are finding it difficult to be still within the comfort of their own home? I don’t want to downplay the significance of connection to nature or other people, but fundamentally the mental anguish that people are experiencing has their roots in how the mind is relating to experience, rather than the experience itself.
Compelled by circumstances to be still, for some even to be alone, many people feel that they are unable to find happiness by themselves, or with their loved ones, within the comfort of their own homes. Samsara is like this: it’s a mind that says “this isn’t enough,” “things should be different than they are,” “I’ll be happy when…”
When my father died in a car accident in 2010, it brought my life to a stop. Just six months earlier, I had moved to Thailand and started studying Buddhism. The teachings on impermanence helped me to face mortality more honestly, to accept that “this is simply the way that things are right now.” On one level I understood this was true: my father’s sudden passing took this lesson from theory to practice and made it viscerally real. Yet there were other ways in which I was living my life that suggested that perhaps this lesson wasn’t fully realized.
For example, for someone who just lost a loved one in a car accident, it didn’t totally compute that perhaps the motorcycle taxis I was riding all over Bangkok might not be a great idea. That’s not true in any absolute sense, but in retrospect, I was slow to really think about this newly ingrained behavior critically. If I had fully grasped this nature of samsara, that I could die at any moment on this motorbike, that life is actually very uncertain, would I have viewed that motorbike taxi as a calculated risk worth taking?
I don’t think so. I just wasn’t conscious enough to make this choice wisely: there was some intellectual understanding that I could die at any moment, but then on some level, there was a denial that “this could happen to me now.” I had a lot of karma, psychological conditioning, around reckless behavior that took many years to unwind. If I’m honest, even today, I can’t say that I’m completely free of it, for we are always a work in progress, and by “work” I mean something more akin to a work of art that’s constantly unfolding, rather than a self-improvement project for one’s ego.
As the years passed and the trauma of my Dad’s sudden death coalesced in my unconscious, I started becoming too cautious. I was reluctant to do some of the more adventurous things that I wanted to do, like hiking in Nepal, which did require flights, car rides or hikes in remote areas that were relatively more dangerous.
This was another way in which I was failing to recognize samsara: life is inherently uncertain and there’s no way to create some sort of perfect cocoon of safety.
Maybe I would die in a car ride in the mountains of Nepal, or maybe I’d die in a car ride right where I live in Thailand. It’s uncertain.
Yet in the end, there’s nowhere that any of us can hide. Ultimately, we can not hide from uncertainty, disease, and death. This is simply the nature of samsara: it is inherently impermanent and uncertain. We think that we can manufacture a sense of safety and security. Clearly, there are behaviors that are relatively more or less risky--let’s not discount that fact, especially in light of our responsibility to the well being of other people during this pandemic; however, we slip into delusion when we forget that life is fundamentally uncertain and can change on a dime. It’s this ignorance of how things really are, and our resistance to change when life reminds of its impermanent nature, that is the source of our suffering.
An important first step to becoming more mindful and less reactive is simply recognizing without judgment: right now we’re in the midst of a global pandemic. When you notice your mind rebelling against reality come back to the phrase: “this is how things are right now.”
Take another deep breath into your belly and allow the phrases to drop down from your head into your body: “this is how things are right now are.” Recognition, followed by acceptance, are important initial steps on the path to freedom, joy, and peace.
Samsara is like this. Sometimes the ocean is calm, sometimes it’s turbulent. This is neither good nor bad. It’s just the nature of the ocean.
The problem is that when the ocean is calm, the mind subtly starts expecting that it will stay that way. That’s a deeply rooted egoic desire for security and our deepest desires can easily pull us into a trance of delusion. The mind forgets that just as the ocean is sometimes calm, it’s also the nature of the ocean to be turbulent. Perhaps we can predict it with some degree of accuracy, but the truth of the matter is that it can change at any moment.
This is equally true for the ocean of consciousness: reality as it unfolds within awareness. Mindfulness meditation does not offer you a futile hope that the ocean will never be turbulent again; it’s teaching you how to surf.
The coronavirus is simply the curriculum that life is giving us right now to awaken. This isn’t to say that this should be happening, or that it should not be happening; it’s simply to acknowledge that “this is happening.” We can learn to shift from denial and resistance towards openness and receptivity. It’s that sense of openness and receiving, on a bodily level, that will allow us to work with challenging emotions more effectively.
Do not underestimate what you can do right now, even if you are confined within your own apartment, even if you’ve been laid off of work, even if your mind seems like it’s wrapped up in a ball of fear, anxiety, and resistance. Your mind is creating your reality, so learning how to work with your mind is clearly an endeavor worthy of your time.
Through mindfulness meditation, we’re learning to turn the mind away from looking to the world for happiness, and instead, realizing that a reliable sense of happiness and well being comes from relating differently to whatever is happening.
It’s a path that’s moving us towards nirvana: a mind resting in its own place.
The truth is that most people need a crisis to wake up. Otherwise, life is just too comfortable, inertia is just too strong, change is just too painful. Our world needs to wake up: to look honestly and unflinchingly at what we’re doing to this planet, to each other and to ourselves. In order to see clearly we need to stop looking out to the world as the source of our problems and our happiness and to look within.
We need to learn how to be still.
This pandemic is a very disruptive force; however, crisis also creates opportunities. You can start to notice all of the ways in which you’re resisting reality, to let go of the patterns that are no longer serving you well, and to find a more reliable path to freedom, happiness, and peace.
How will you start to make these choices, in ways big and small?
One small investment that can have big results: finding 20 minutes a day to practice a meditation called RAIN, which builds on the steps I described above. You can access this practice for free on my YouTube channel.