How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Assholes

[CRACK]

The sound pierces my brain like railroad spike into the ground.

[CRACK]

My entire body convulses with the shock of the noise.

[CRACK]

It feels like a cross between Chinese water torture and electroshock therapy. That was the 10th one in a row, which meant it would stop for at least 30 minutes. Relief washes over me and I regain my composure.

I slowly sink back into the depths of my own psyche, a consuming universe of vibrant sensations coursing in and around my body. I am in my 6th day of a day a 10 day Vipassana retreat, nearly finished with 7 of 10 hours of meditation scheduled for the day.

The 6th day is known to be one of the most difficult of the 10 days, a day where your inner obstacles tend to manifest themselves, where your unconscious habits show their faces and test your strength of focus, the depth of your presence, the breadth of your compassion.

On this particular day, I was tested in all three. The meditator next to me, a young Indian man, was my devil and teacher. He would get up and go outside every 30 or 40 minutes, always shifting around, fidgeting, making noise. Today his new preoccupation was cracking each one of his knuckles.

One.
After.
The Other.
After.
The Other.
After.
The.
Other.

And then he would repeat it. It was maddening.

In Vipassana meditation, you systematically focus on the sensations of your body, and over time your perceptions become more and more acute, your senses heightened and deepened day by day, hour by hour.

You become intensely sensitive to the slightest breeze, the smell of a flowering tree 50 meters away, the ripples of pressure and stretching of tendons as you walk step by step, the entire dazzling kaleidoscope of internal sensations created the infinite world pulsating around us, unceasingly kissing our senses.

Things we are generally too preoccupied and desensitized to notice. But when we start to pay very close attention… it is absolutely absorbing.

The knuckle cracking was a bucket of ice water to my hyper-sensitized ears. Immediately, it triggered all sorts of reactions, anger at the idiot for disrespecting the meditation space, a thousand versions of “how dare he….” and thought loops throwing off my meditation. I became unbalanced, obsessing, thinking, chattering away to myself how I’d like to give him a piece of my mind, or turn and give him a good smack, or tell the teacher, or whatever self-righteous justice seemed like a good idea in that moment.

I could go on like this for quite some time, until finally I would realize I hadn’t been meditating for perhaps 20 minutes and finally resume the practice.

This is how adversity works. How challenges push us to grow and learn.

Like clockwork, the knuckle cracking would start again. Only this time, my rage boiled up stronger than ever, I broke my meditation and opened my eyes to glare at my tormenter.

In front of his seat he had spelled out his name with little bits of thread he had collected on the floor.

RAJNEESH.

What the hell is this guy doing playing with string… he’s… oh… And it felt like gong in my heart had been struck by a fat monk:

He doesn’t want to be here.

He is miserable.

He was forced to be here by elders in his village.

Sitting in meditation for 10 hours a day is not easy. You knees become frozen fire, your back aches, most people end up hobbling around like geriatric zombies from stiffness and pins and needles in half-asleep feet. But if you don’t actually dive into the practice, if you don’t meditate, it’s all just suffering. Vipassana is a practice to, among other things, see through suffering. To transcend it and use it to further your growth and development.

Without the practice, you’re just wallowing in it.

Poor guy!

In a single moment, all my rage and anger transmuted into compassion. Energy and love coursed through my being and a flash of insights burst across my awareness.

It’s never about you. Those people who are doing that thing that pisses you off so much? It’s not about you. And if you take the time to look deeply, they’re really just miserable for one reason or another.

This is easy to say, easy to write.

Application, here in your real life with all those assholes doing all sorts of shitty things, this is HARD.

Learn to see their actions for what they are, painful reactions to a deeper internal suffering they may not even be conscious of. The are acting from their own misery. Each insult, each injury is another opportunity for your own training, for deepening and growth.

If you can flip the switch and see through the eyes of compassion, you have freed yourself. Their actions cannot determine your happiness. They cannot get under your skin. They cannot hurt you.

You are your own master.