Alchemizing Sadness And Loneliness
A Zen story, a long drive, and a deep lesson in how sadness and loneliness can become something beautiful—if we let them.
Here is a story from my Zen tradition:
It’s about a time when Zen Master Man Gong’s health was not good.
A monk went to visit him.
“How are you feeling?” the monk asked.
“Sun face Buddha,” Zen Master Man Gong said. “Moon face Buddha.”
By this he meant:
When one’s face is as bright as the sun, that is Buddha.
When one’s face is as gray as the moon, that is also Buddha.
When I feel good, that is Buddha.
When I feel bad, that is also Buddha.
A couple of weeks ago, driving away after a visit with my 19-year-old daughter Bella, I felt very sad and lonely.
Or maybe it’s better to say that an energy called sadness and an energy called loneliness took up residence in my body.
Or that clouds of sadness and loneliness blew through my sky.
Or that beings from a lower realm whispered to me about how sad and lonely everything was.
Or that demons of sadness and loneliness possessed me.
I’d spent a week with Bella in the beautiful autumn Berkshire Mountains.
Trees everywhere. Water everywhere. Sky everywhere.
Driving away, leaving her behind, I felt like a rubber band fixed at one end, stretching tighter the farther I got from her. When the rubber band finally broke, I had to pull over and cry a little.
For 17 or 18 years, Bella needed me. Really needed me. In the middle teen years, she was pretty much my full-time job.
She’s good now. Great, in fact.
For all those years, I couldn’t travel much. There was always somewhere I had to be. I was needed. More than I even wanted to be.
Now?
I left the Berkshires that day to drive to Cambridge Zen Center. I’m here now. It’s lovely. The people are great.
But no one here is desperate to have me near them. They like me. But they don’t need me.
That’s what I was thinking in the car when I pulled over.
There’s nowhere I have to go, I thought. No place where anyone will be at a loss if I don’t arrive. I’m not really needed.
I might as well go to Canada, I thought. Or Mexico. Or London. Or Fiji. Or nowhere.
I know—those thoughts could sound like freedom.
But for five minutes on the side of the road, crying on my steering wheel, they felt like loneliness.
Here’s a passage from On Becoming An Alchemist by Catherine MacCoun, a book I love:
“Let me tell you a little story about the greatest alchemist I ever met. He was a poet, an artist, a great spiritual teacher with many devoted students. People waited hours to hear his lectures. Scores of beautiful women wanted to sleep with him. His students vied for the honor of doing his laundry or disposing of his Kleenex. Nearly every night they prepared him a banquet.
One night, at dinner, he suddenly began to weep for no apparent reason. His friends and students leaned in with concern, but he sobbed too hard to speak. Finally, through his tears, he managed to explain:
‘I am so lonely,’ he said.”
Even a very great magician occasionally needs to be tucked into bed and sung to sleep.
And me?
To be clear, I’m not calling myself a great magician.
But sometimes I crave to rest my head in someone’s lap.
I listen to a lot of people. I hear their joys and pains. I use my personal power in my work and talk about myself in ways that sometimes make me feel vulnerable. Weary, even.
So at the end of the day, with no lap to put my head in, the loneliness clouds blow in. The demons whisper.
Sadness and loneliness exist. They just do.
They’re always out there, like clouds in the sky, energy fields in the universe.
Sometimes I’m present to them. Sometimes you are.
The usual way we try to deal with them is to push them away.
But how do you push away an energy field?
My mind tries to explain it. I’m lonely because of this. Sad because of that. And then it tries to fix the circumstances to make the feelings go away.
But trying to force the world to change just to stop sadness or loneliness?
It’s a ridiculous kind of violence.
Like shouting at a toddler because their baby sibling is crying. Babies cry. You can’t stop them. Shouting won’t help.
And trying to change life to avoid sadness or loneliness is the same.
A wise person said, “Do not fight the bad but build the good.”
Resist not evil.
When Bella was about one and a half, I carried her on my shoulders along Sixth Avenue, heading home from the babysitter.
It started to rain, so I opened an umbrella over us.
The wind kept blowing the umbrella off, and the rain came down. Bella cried.
“I’m trying to hold it up, honey,” I told her, “but the wind.”
But then I noticed:
She wasn’t crying when the umbrella blew away and we got wet.
She was crying when the umbrella stayed put and kept the rain off.
She wanted to feel the rain.
And really, what kind of life would we want if we didn’t get to feel the rain?
In On Becoming An Alchemist, Catherine MacCoun says magic is based on our ability to be present with any experience.
We can waste our magic trying to reject experience. Or we can use it to transform experience and make it beautiful.
She writes:
“Alchemists are to the thought environment what plants are to the physical environment. They can take in the hazardous waste of human experience and return it to the world as nourishment, refreshment, and beauty.”
Bella transformed the rain into beauty.
What might my loneliness and sadness become, if I stop rejecting them and stay present?
Isn’t there something beautiful about a 61-year-old man pulled over in his car in the autumn Berkshires, crying because he misses his daughter?
Or wishing he had a lap to rest his head in?
I ask because, even crying in the car, even longing for the lap, I was something like Bella in the rain.
And really, what kind of life would we want if we didn’t get to feel the rain?
I could fight my sadness and loneliness.
You could fight yours.
Or we could be like Man Gong.
Sun face Buddha.
Moon face Buddha.
Let’s talk
Where in your life do you try to block the rain?
What would happen if, instead, you just let yourself feel it?
I'd love to hear your thoughts. Comment below or reply to this email.
Try This
Next time you feel sadness or loneliness creeping in, pause and notice:
Can you sit with it instead of pushing it away?
What beauty might be hiding inside it?
What happens if you stop trying to fix it?
Write down what you notice. Let it be part of your magic.
Love,
Colin
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