Grasshopper #2: Renunciation
Photo copyright 2021 Martin Edic
“Khandro Rinpoche, a Tibetan Lama, once said that if you say certain words to Western audiences, they press everybody’s buttons. She likes to say them and watch the reactions. One of these words is ‘surrender’. Another is ‘renunciation’. Everybody cringes when she says, “we need to renounce”. And everybody says, “what do we need to renounce? What do I have to give up?”.
And yet renunciation is one of the main stages on the path.”
Jetsunnma Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake (Snow Lion)
In this issue I’m looking at renunciation’s role in Western society. If renunciation seems too much for you, try replacing it with minimalism, a trendy term that isn’t as scary. As usual, I take three angles, coming at the subject from the Practical, Motivational, and Different perspectives.
Practical:
The following article originally appeared on Medium.com
Practicing Negative Consumerism
The route to a simpler life
Buying things is an installed habit, especially for Americans. I have friends who use shopping as a kind of therapy, and their homes are filled with trash. When I say filled, I’m not referring to a hoarder thing, I’m talking about houses decorated like bad store displays.
They have closets full of clothing with the tags still on it.
The reason I call it an ‘installed habit’ is because marketing has trained us to do this. I know, because I spent a large part of my life being a marketing person. Twenty years ago it was estimated that we saw 1500 marketing pitches daily.
That was largely pre-internet.
I don’t know the number today but it is certainly in the tens of thousands. Maybe we don’t remember them, but they register. It is a form of pollution for our memory and subconscious. Not unlike those microscopic particles of plastic in our air and water. But this pollution is internal and it affects the way we live our lives.
As I write this, the Christmas holiday is a few days away. I’m not anti-Christmas, despite not being a Christian. The holiday is a celebration of the return of longer days and the year turning towards spring and regrowth.
At least that was the reason we celebrated it this time of year, once.
But Christmas has been marketed as the season of giving, that is to say, buying. And it is also a difficult time for many, in part because of all that buying.
We have Christmas in July sales, every year, though that makes exactly no sense.
And, as a result, we have a lot of stuff, stuff we really don’t need.
Minimalism is all the rage these days. We see photo essays about empty rooms with pristine white walls and one signature piece of sculptural furniture, perfectly positioned, and we think it is beautiful.
But we can’t imagine living in that room.
Here’s my definition of minimalism that is practical: having no possession that you do not reuse on a regular basis.
Chairs you actually sit on. Objects you keep because they have a meaning in your life, or you simply love to look at them, preferably both. Tools.
I’d like to say I live like that. I aspire to live like that, but I’m not quite there. However, I have a rule that keeps me at an equilibrium of sorts. When I buy something, something else goes. If I buy a set of mixing bowls, the old ones go to the laundry room in my building, with a sticky note that says ‘free’.
But now I’m thinking of getting proactive about simplifying my life further by actually giving away two things anytime I acquire one. For example, I still buy physical books and they tend to pile up. Now, I’m going to take two books I will not read again and give them away when I buy a new one.
The net result should be a smaller library.
It’s not quite a Marie Kondo thing, though I watched her TV show once with a kind of delight as she helped a family remove tons of stuff they had forgotten they owned, and their house became noticeably lighter and more open.
Lighter and more noticeably open.
We all feel better when we feel like that.
It’s really the goal of things like mindfulness and meditation. We don’t seek to clear our minds, just to make space to fill them up again. We want space to step back and take a look at things from a different perspective.
When you have too much stuff it’s hard to step back. There’s no place to step back to.
I think that this is what minimalism is all about, not white walls and sculptural furniture. Though I must admit that when I am barraged with ads and enticed by beautiful cars, polished to an unreal gleam, I am temporarily smitten. But then I feel used by those marketers.
But doubling down on getting rid of things may be my prescription for fighting unnecessary consumerism in my life.
I think I want to feel lighter and more open. It sounds nice.
Different:
Wall Facers and Home Leavers
A meditation on the nature of personal space
In the Buddhist tradition the terms ‘wall facers’ and ‘home leavers’ both refer to the rununciation that monks must experience to become members of an order and practice sitting meditation. But both also reference the avoidance of desire and something important about personal space, our place in the world.
Home leaver is a definition of a monk, one who leaves his normal life behind and enters a world with few material possessions: a robe, a bowl, a rosary, perhaps a staff. Nothing of any real value in societal terms. When I first heard the phrase it gave me a kind of thrill tinged with a bit of fear. To literally leave everything behind in a search for meaning. Friends, family, comfort, protection…
In the Chinese and Japanese Zen tradition this often took place when the new monk was little more than a child, as young as eight or nine years old. To be thrust out into the enormous world with virtually no experience of it and sent to live in a distant temple with a sparse lifestyle. I can only imagine what this does to the sense of self, but then the concept of self is not accepted in Buddhism, which teaches we are all at one with everything.
You become a wall facer after this renunciation of the past. The phrase refers to the Soto Zen tradition of facing a blank wall when meditating, to eliminate distraction and give all an equally humble view. So, becoming a spiritual monk (many were not) meant taking on both these roles and changing your perspective of what constitutes personal space. In essence whatever personal space you have left is internal.
The ultimate outcome of this is not to turn inward but to see the entire world with new eyes, eyes not tainted with a limited description imposed by society. This new ability to exist in the world as an integral part of it, should then create true compassion for all other beings and things that make it up, both sentient and non-sentient. Some traditions argue that everything is sentient, but that’s a whole different discussion.
In a sense this means loving all of a new self, one shared with everything. It’s a frightening thing for those in the material world who count their value in what they have and their status in the world. To intentionally go without and to feel compassion for all, even the most repugnant. It’s a big ask.
Anyone who has learned to sit and count breaths, or any other form of meditation, must learn to at least step away from the incessant flow of thoughts and simply watch them. It is a learned skill, no different than learning to walk or speak. And when you are able to do this, even on a fundamental level, your perception of the space around you changes, even if only for a few moments. All things coalesce, a state known as samadhi.
As a writer I know that there is a space I go to when immersed in writing that is undefinable, though I’ve been there many times. For me, this is my personal space in the literal sense of the phrase. I leave home and face a simple unadorned wall, all my focus on the flow of language and ideas. I wish I could say this always happens; it doesn’t, but when it does the writing is better.
I can only ascribe this to being similar to those rare times when in meditation or while walking when I am able to stop the world, to see it as it is rather than as I ‘know’ it to be. It’s a rare thing to shed my personal space for a larger world.
Motivational:
Giving is Getting
As Tenzin Palmo’s quote suggests, those of us who live in Western economies based on materialism, can freak out when we think of giving stuff up. Not just physical stuff, but that stuff that fills our heads. Money, relationships, health concerns, various stressors and desires.
In my experience it is when I empty things out that I feel less stress. It’s like that feeling when you let the kitchen get messy and finally get in there and clean everything up and put things back in their place. It feels good to clear out those dirty dishes and wipe down those counters.
Everything is ready for another meal, nice and neat. Maybe you reward yourself with a cup of coffee and just stand in your clean kitchen feeling pretty good about this little slice of life, this moment.
Renunciation is no more and no less than this simple. Arranging your life so unnecessary things are not cluttering it up. I have a second bedroom in my apartment (I live alone) that I use as an office, but over the past few years it has become a kind of junk room, full of things I do not use. A vintage Bianchi bike, another new but never used folding bike, an old drafting table, a new but little used portable air conditioner. Clothes I packed up to take to a shelter one of these days.
I don’t like going in there much. But this spring I’m clearing it out. The AC unit is sold. The bikes will follow. I’ll give that drafting table away to anyone who will haul it out. And I’ll load those clothes into my friend’s car and finally get them to the House of Mercy.
Just imagining that room without that stuff makes me happy. The reality will be even better.
Try making a Renunciation checklist. Make it a Minimalism checklist if you want. Write it down and keep it doable. In my case, if selling the stuff is too big a task, I’ll just give it away. Sure, that folding bike cost $400 new. I’m sure I can sell it but if I can’t it still goes. That $400 is a sunk cost, which means that money has been gone a long time and no longer has value.
Not having a room full of junk has value, just as facing a wall and clearing your mind for a few minutes has value. More than we know.
That’s it for this week. I hope something here made your day a little better!