The hell of being a practitioner

Apprentice  Why is it that I can see, in my practice of shi-nè, exactly how my mind works, but I can’t seem to do anything about it?

Lamas  Because you didn’t read the sub-clause in the contract concerning the exorbitant fee, which has yet to be received.

Apprentice: I can follow the steps from one to two to three, from feeling a slight chill from an open window in the shrine room to a full-fledged snit along the lines of: ‘How can she be so inconsiderate as to open that window when she knows I’m sensitive to cold?’ I can feel my blood pressure rise. I know this is all just building out from a simple physical sensation that doesn’t mean anything beyond itself.  I don’t want to be resentful of the person who opened the window. I know she suffers when a room is stuffy. But I go through the whole little dance anyway. Is there ever a point where this stops?

Lamas  Why would you want it to stop?  You would lose all the fun of acting out.  This question—jesting apart—is probably everyone’s question. It is just that everyone is not asking it.  This is called ‘the hell of being a practitioner’.   The hell of being a practitioner is the state in which we begin to see through our neuroses, and yet we continue to afflict ourselves with them.  It is useful to know that this is occurring. We wish to be free of our neuroses—but we also wish to ride them into the sunset crying ‘Yee-HA!’.   As you say—we ‘go through the whole little dance anyway’.  Then we go through it again—and again—and again. As to the point where it stops—it does not stop by trying to stop it.  It can only stop through clarity.  To have clarity, or to have clarity develop, we need humour.  The ‘whole little dance’ has to be seen for what it is.  We have to accept that we are both dance partners, the died-in-the-wool neurotic and the practitioner who is trying to let neuroses go.  That is comical and we have to be fairly light-hearted about it.   With sufficient humour, we can simply be the space that lets these two lunatics dance.