Squinting Through the Mist of Delusion
“Once you are in the midst of delusion, there is no end to delusion.” — Shunryū Suzuki
Shunryū Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind has slowly grown into one of my favorite books these past few years. Along with a few Alan Watts lectures, it was instrumental in getting me started with Buddhism. And it’s something that I keep going back to over and over. Usually, when I need some kind of comfort. I uncover new understandings each time through. I own it in a couple different forms, but I usually listen to it as an audiobook. (Peter Coyote reads it in the most soothing baritone you can imagine.)
A few nights ago, I came across this passage, which I didn’t immediately remember. For some reason, this time it stuck out for me, and I can’t stop thinking about it…
“When your life is always a part of your surroundings — in other words, when you are called back to yourself, in the present moment — then there is no problem. When you start to wander about in some delusion which is something apart from you yourself, then your surroundings are not real anymore, and your mind is not real anymore.
If you yourself are deluded, then your surroundings are also a misty, foggy delusion. Once you are in the midst of delusion, there is no end to delusion. You will be involved in deluded ideas one after another.
Most people live in delusion, involved in their problem, trying to solve their problem.”
I’m writing this from my phone because if I wasn’t writing this, I’d be on a social media app making myself angry reading about things being done very far away from me, by people I’ve never met, over whom I have absolutely no power. A lot of shit going on in the world at the time of writing. It fills up my thoughts sometimes and saps my energy. And there’s not really anything I can do but complain. And that only feels good for a second.
When I look up from my phone, though, I see my wife sitting in the chair across from me. The overcast sky succumbing to dusk in the window beside her. Under a blanket. Reading. We just finished listening to the new Andre 3000 flute album, and now we’re back to shuffling through our regular shared playlist. Psycho Killer. My elderly dog Hazel-rah is lying on the dog bed beside me. My son is somewhere. I think he might be playing with his Switch, but who knows.
I live for these moments. And yet it takes a certain amount of effort to make myself appreciate them while they’re happening. I’ll almost certainly spend a nice chunk of tonight stewing on some hateful bullshit some asshole across the country said. And it’s not just the phone. I don’t need the internet’s help finding unsolvable problems to obsess over. Work. Lack of work. An email I was supposed to send. Some dumb thing my wife said three days ago. How old my face looks.
And none of it is real. The moment I turn my attention to the scar tissue in Hazel’s knee and start trying to massage away some of his pain, all that other stuff vanishes. They’re all simply abstractions. Ideas of things to worry about. Ideas that I’ll certainly get back to later on.
This is my understanding of Suzuki’s quote. At least at the moment. We “live in delusion” in that we live in problems of our own design. Not that the problems don’t exist. They do actually exist (that email does need to be sent), but they’re not actually problems (the second I send the email, it’ll cease to be a problem, so it’s not actually problem). My dog’s pain is a real problem. The oldness of my face is not.
Lots of times, though, I don’t even hear my dog’s whining, because I’m too focused on something that I’ve convinced myself into believing was what really mattered. Usually something happening very far away. Or only far away inside my mind. Wherever it is, I might as well be there for as much as I’m experience the here I’m standing in.
Every once in a while, something really real happens, though. Something so real that I can’t ignore it’s happening. And in those moments all the delusion evaporates. Everything that filled up my entire world just five minutes earlier is suddenly gone. And I’m gifted in those moments with radical perspective. Which isn’t always fun. Very often is not. But, it opens a tiny window into the real world.
Sometimes, when I’m lucky, I find the presence of mind to reach out for the window. And I hold it open for as long as I can manage.
But, Jesus Christ, is it heavy.
