Letting Go, Letting Love

After the Ecstasy

An excerpt from Jack Kornfield's forthcoming book

Ajahn Buddhadasa, whose monastery spread across a great forest of the Malay Peninsula, invited his students to sit with him in the coolness of the trees. Then he made a point of directing his students to look for Nirvana in the simplest ways, in everyday moments. “Nirvana,” he would say, “is the coolness of letting go, the inherent delight of experience when there is no grasping or resistance to life.”

Anyone can see that if grasping and aversion were with us all day and night without ceasing, who could ever stand them? Under that condition, living things would either die or become insane. Instead, we survive because there are natural periods of coolness, of wholeness, and ease. In fact, they last longer than the fires of our grasping and fear. It is this that sustains us. We have periods of rest making us refreshed, alive, well. Why don't we feel thankful for this everyday Nirvana?

We already know how to let go—we do it every night when we go to sleep, and that letting go, like a good night's sleep, is delicious. Opening in this way, we can live in the reality of our wholeness. A little letting go brings us a little peace, a greater letting go brings us a greater peace. Entering the gateless gate, we begin to treasure the moments of wholeness. We begin to trust the natural rhythm of the world, just as we trust our own sleep and how our own breath breathes itself.

On a retreat, a healer and psychologist who had devoted fifteen years to spiritual practice was struggling yet again with the question of relationships. Feelings of longing and craving and blame kept coming up again and again. We talked and I suggested he spend some days directing a lovingkindness meditation toward himself. At first he resisted; like so many of us, he felt uncomfortable focusing on himself. It was awkward to offer the intention of love and kindness to himself over and over for days. But as the retreat went on, his heart softened. Forgiveness for himself and others arose. The world began to look more beautiful. And then came a realization:

It is I who must love myself. No one else can make me feel whole. Only I can provide that love. Now I know that wholeness is always accessible to me and all beings everywhere. This knowing allows me to live with a new peacefulness and kindness to myself and others. In the simplest way, it has changed my whole life.

Again, the lesson of spiritual practice is not about gaining knowledge, but about how we love. Are we able to love what is given to us, to love in the midst of all things, to love ourselves and others? Are we able to see the illumination offered by the sun every morning? If we cannot, what must we do in the body, heart, and mind to allow us to open ourselves, to let go, to rest in our natural perfection? The gate is open, what we seek is just in front of us. It is so today and every day.

Meditation teacher Larry Rosenberg went to practice with Zen Master Seung Sahn in Korea. During the journey he undertook a pilgrimage to other masters and temples, and while traveling on a remote road he came across a particularly elegant Buddhist shrine, or stupa, at the base of a mountain. Next to it was a sign, “Way to the Most Beautiful Buddha in All of Korea,” and an arrow pointing to the thousand-step path up the mountain. Larry decided to climb, hiking up the steps until he reached the top. The view was breathtaking in every direction. The simple Zen stone pagoda matched the elegance of the one below. But in place of the Buddha on the altar there was nothing, only empty space and the gorgeous green-hilled vista below. When he went closer, at the empty altar was a plaque that read, “If you can't see the Buddha here, you had better go down and practice some more.”

From After the Ecstasy, The Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path by Jack Kornfield Copyright (c) Jack Kornfield. To be published in June 2000 by Bantam Books, an imprint of the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.