Letting Go of Enchantment — Letting Go Series

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Letting Go of Enchantment — Enchantment is like a story-trance. We’re projecting, telling stories, and lost in the story. Disenchantment lets us see and interact with “what is.”

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The book Fire Monks is the sto­ry of 5 monks who, in 2008, remained in the path of a wild­fire to save the Zen Monastery in Cal­i­for­nia. (I read it as an e‑book, so no page num­ber for the quote, to follow…)

Work­ing through each of the gates of per­cep­tion-the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, body, mind-and the fires at each gate, the Bud­dha taught that “dis­en­chant­ment” is the path to lib­er­a­tion. He urged the monks not to stamp out the fires of the sens­es, but to sim­ply see that they are there and to rec­og­nize them for what they are-sen­sa­tions, per­cep­tions, thoughts, not sol­id or fixed, but always burn­ing, trans­form­ing.
~ Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wild­fire at the Gates of Tas­sa­jara, by Colleen Mor­ton Busch

In Zen, the gates of perception are the normal 5 senses, plus the mind. In each case, there is a stimulus, and then a response. So far, so good.

The 5 sens­es do what they do: eyes see, ears hear… The mind labels and rates. “That apple is red and tastes delicious!”

A look at enchantment

Enchant­ment could also be thought of as desire (or aver­sion, or con­fu­sion about), which is where we get into trouble. 

These three (often described as cling­ing) is what leads to suf­fer­ing, or bet­ter, unsat­is­fac­tori­ness.

Bud­dhists in the crowd will real­ize I’m play­ing with the 4 Noble Truths here.

Our suf­fer­ing comes from our enchant­ment with what we are inter­act­ing with. Rather than deal with it and be done (to be avail­able for the next thing), we want more, more, more of what we like, none, none, none, of what we detest, and if we are neu­tral, we can’t fig­ure out “why.”

In Zen, on the other hand, one deals with what is in front of us as it is.

Exam­ple: I see an orange. I can choose to reach out and eat it. Clean, simple. 

There’s an exer­cise you can do that cov­ers the 6 Gates.

• 1. Look at the orange. Real­ly see the pores in the skin.
• 2. Smell the orange. Inhale the scent of the peel.
• 3. Lis­ten to the sound of peel­ing the orange.
• 4. Rub the peel, and an orange slice, with your fin­gers, or any place else you’d like to rub it.
• 5. Taste the orange.
• 6. Repeat each of the sens­es with an orange seg­ment — look, smell, lis­ten to the sound of bit­ing in, feel it.
• 7. And, all along, observe your mind as it describes (ana­lyzes) the expe­ri­ence. “Pret­ty! Sweet! Soft! Smooth! Juicy!” etc.
• 8. Eat the entire orange slow­ly, mindfully.

In psychotherapy, this might be called a Gestalt, or a complete event.

This is engage­ment, with­out enchantment.

What I mean is that what we “feel,” or sense, is per­fect­ly nor­mal, and com­plete in itself, as per the quote above: 

“He urged the monks not to stamp out the fires of the sens­es, but to sim­ply see that they are there and to rec­og­nize them for what they are.” 

Where we get into prob­lems is when we start telling sto­ries.

The flavours of enchant­ment, again, are: desire, aver­sion, and con­fu­sion. The prob­lem, then, with our desires is that they are pro­jec­tions (addi­tions, fig­ments of our imag­i­na­tion) that are placed upon that which is right in front of us.

Let me just tell a story to describe all of this.

Once upon a time, Susie met Sam at a par­ty. He was attrac­tive, chat­ted her up, smelled and felt good… and Susie liked what was right in front of her. So much so that Susie brought Sam home that very night, and they spent the night doing the hor­i­zon­tal mam­bo. (Sort of like an all night orange tast­ing festival…)

The next day, Sam left, and promised to call.

Susie had a choice to make.

• The Zen choice: have a show­er, make break­fast, and engage ful­ly with eggs and bacon.
• The enchant­ment choice: walk through her day in a daze, obsess­ing, get­ting turned on, fantasizing.

She chose desire and enchantment.

She mooned over Sam. She told her friends that he was per­fect, that she was going to move in with him, that he fit her “List of 50.” Susie just knew that the sex was going to get bet­ter and bet­ter. They would trav­el, and play, and he would inspire her to cre­ate masterpieces.

He took a week to call back, said he’d had fun, and that he was inter­est­ed in hav­ing sex with her, but was­n’t pre­pared to leave his girlfriend.

Girlfriend!!!

“He nev­er told me about a girl­friend! What a sleaze! He’s a ter­ri­ble person!”

She now chose aversion and enchantment.

For two weeks, she stewed, and chewed, and made up more sto­ries. All about what ter­ri­ble things she imag­ined Sam was doing, or capa­ble of.

Then she heard that Sam had tak­en up with a mutu­al friend.

She ended up confused and enchanted. As usual.

She now blamed her­self for being dumb, eas­i­ly led astray. She had trou­ble believ­ing she was ready to mar­ry Sam, and that she had wast­ed so much time on him. (Remem­ber: she’s actu­al­ly spent 12 hours with Sam.)

Susie sighed, resigned­ly, “I guess I’m just not the right per­son for any­one. I nev­er catch a break. I guess I’ll always be alone.”

Enchantment is all about story-telling.

In each case, Susie was not describ­ing Sam. She was describ­ing her sto­ry about Sam, and in each case, her sto­ry was fixed and frozen. First, he is always and only per­fect (and hot!) Then, he’s always and only a jerk. Then, he drops to back­ground, and she becomes the woman who always misunderstands.

Yet, and here is the disenchantment, nothing, absolutely nothing, is fixed.

We are not a fixed “me” — we are a dynam­ic process. We are this, then that, and there’s no sto­ry about any of it.

A life­time ago, one of our very cool nieces just left. She described the fam­i­ly’s stay at a cot­tage. She ran around our kitchen and liv­ing room, say­ing, “And here is a door and here is a bed…” She fin­ished her sto­ry and was imme­di­ate­ly on to some­thing else. 

She was a flowing process — a storyteller — not a story-believer.

Her sis­ter, mean­while, moved from yoga pose to yoga pose, then to my stu­dio, then to clean­ing my paint palate of dried paint, then to a sto­ry, then to lunch. 100% engaged, and 100% flexible.

Kids get being present — we could choose to do so, too.

The feel­ings we have, are meant to be felt, full bore. But here’s the key: it’s essen­tial that we feel it all, and then let go.

Not just feel what we want to feel, but all of it. Not accepting one story about ourselves or others, but all of them. Not picking one set of behaviours, but playing with life in its myriad forms.

Always with 100% atten­tion, and 100% disenchantment.

Then every­thing is every­thing, and every­thing is noth­ing, and we are a part of the real world, expe­ri­enc­ing it all, with no judge­ment and no reserve.

Full bore liv­ing, “…not sol­id or fixed, but always burn­ing, transforming.”

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