By Sensei Morris Sekiyo Sullivan
Stetson University Chaplain

As we return to school, this might be a good time to reflect on how we might use a stressful event as an opportunity to ride a little more smoothly on the winds of change as they blow through our lives.

As you may know, I’m a Buddhist minister. Because I’m also a recognized Zen master in a Vietnamese lineage, a lot of people come to me to learn about meditation. I often ask what they hope to accomplish by meditating. The most common answer is, “I want inner peace.”

Well, I have inner peace. I don’t know if I have more of it than the average person, but I know I have more of it than I had 10 years ago, and infinitely more than I had 20 or 30 years ago. I also have emotions that aren’t particularly peaceful. I tend not to hang on to them very long, but things like anger, anxiety and discouragement do arise, even in the mind of a Zen master.

And that’s fine. Inner peace is pleasant, but it’s not really all that useful. Unpleasant emotions, however, are a side effect of being a caring human being. If you’re anxious about giving a presentation, for instance, that’s because you care about how well you do. If you’re sad when you think about a friend passing away, that’s because you care about other people.

There’s no need to get rid of unpleasant feelings. If you don’t give them a lot of attention, they will eventually go away on their own, anyway. So instead of wanting to feel a certain way, accept the way you do feel. Then shift your attention to your purpose. Your purpose — the things you do that give meaning to your life — will still be there after the feelings have passed.

In Zen, we say we should live naturally. This doesn’t mean you do whatever you feel like doing; it means you don’t assume there’s something wrong with you when you feel anxious, discouraged and so on. You simply feel the way you feel, and then you do what you need to do.

A Call to Action:

Sometime this week, when you’re feeling stressed as the winds of change blow through your life, try this contemplation for navigating your feelings:

• Carefully observe what emotions have arisen. Accept the way you feel. Notice how you may have continued to generate thoughts that maintain or create additional unpleasant feelings.
• Begin to let go of thoughts that perpetuate anger or self-recrimination. Relax into the gaps between stressful thoughts as they subside.
• Consider the values reflected in the thoughts that led to your stress and think about ways you might cultivate values that will lead you toward a fuller, freer life.

 

– Stetson University’s three Chaplains share an interfaith message during Sacred Space, a weekly gathering on Mondays at 7:15 p.m. in Lee Chapel inside Elizabeth Hall. They also write this column for Stetson Today that ties into the theme of this week’s gathering. For more information, contact the Office of the Chaplains at [email protected] or 386-822-7523.