Surprise

“Which part of the future is real and which is not?”
“The unexpected and unpredictable is real.”

- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Edited from original publication on July 1, 2024 to the True Nature community

I thought I might be writing about the retreat I just finished managing, or my favorite talk that we listened to during that retreat, on Right View & Ethics. When I sat down to flesh something out, though, what called to me the most was not the content of the dharma talks or the connections made with and among the retreatants, but an unexpected delight in uncovering yet another unexamined belief I’ve held as long as I can remember.

It goes something like this: I don’t listen to talks/watch movies/read books multiple times. Rarely, I do, and there has consistently been a tinge of dissatisfaction. I’ve apparently interpreted that dissatisfaction to mean that I get most of what I can get out of a written, voice, or video recording the first time and I feel resistant to subsequent exposures - spending time with something that has already had the marrow removed from it by my insatiable appetite for what hits as fresh or alive.

I can’t recall ever having had the following experience before last Thursday when I listened to a talk for the 3rd time with the retreatants here - a talk that I curated for this retreat: I heard the recording so differently and with greater insight on my 3rd take that it was far more fulfilling than during my first or second listen. The content of the talk is irrelevant next to the delicious humble pie I received in the form of another idea about myself disintegrating as I realized I had previously heard the talk on such a superficial level. 

This may not seem like it should be an a-ha moment to anyone else, but it may feel familiar or be reminiscent of your own ideas about yourselves - your preferences, likes, dislikes - things that may seem so small or mundane you’ve never mentioned them to anyone.

I feel - not so much thankful, but in awe - that I would have even chosen the talk to play for the group when I’d understood it so poorly before I played it for them. It strikes me as incredible and beautiful that people can accidentally do so well. Most of us have experience self-flagellating for our mistakes, but I think those are equally as impersonal as our successes. We’re all doing the best we can, as best I can tell. Sometimes my blind spots contribute to hurt - those are the actions we tend to think of as “mistakes.” Other times my blindness helps facilitate something wonderful, but it’s more clear to me than ever that I deserve no more credit for those outcomes than those that lead to something unwanted.

How can this be - deserving neither credit nor blame?

A psychological perspective might offer that some people are too quick to blame themselves for problems and eschew credit for success in order to avoid feeling or being seen as prideful. The flip side of the same coin might show others embracing accolades and avoiding blame to preserve their self-image . . . but the psychological perspectives don’t interest me much anymore, and they aren’t what we’re looking into in True Nature.

What clouds our true nature is the very inclination to explain our motivations, ideas, blind spots, mistakes, or self-image.

Surprises part the clouds - and the practice makes it more likely that we’ll notice when those clouds part.

I was surprised how much more was in the talk than I realized; I was delighted to the point of mirth that I’d held this ridiculous idea about not re-listening to/re-watching great recordings for decades, unexamined; I was interested, above all, in why I love so much to find another assumption and watch it crumble.

These small assumptions may be parts of the Great Assumption, so I feel a breath of relief from the delusion of my “self” when I get to see one more time that its stories don’t hold.

I’m much more interested in what is real than in maintaining any particular idea of myself. 

Isn’t nature kind to make the revelation of the real so fresh, so subtle, and so surprising?

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