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Greed
When you sit down and observe your own mind, on purpose, just for fun, as a kind of scientific inquiry into what drives you. If you focus on the breath as the object of attention and you’re riding on the waves as you’re breathing, it doesn’t take long before you’ll notice that some kind of want comes up, some kind of desire. And maybe it’s because your body’s uncomfortable. So maybe you just want to fidget a little or shift posture. Why? Because we’re ants. Why are we antsy? Because we want to be comfortable and we’re not comfortable. So rather than holding the discomfort in awareness, because why should we privilege comfort, comfort discomfort, because there’s no ultimate comfort. That’s why we shift from one leg to the other, and we’re very shifty. But if you actually train yourself to be embodied, you get less shifty. I mean, the mind just naturally settles, the body naturally settles, and you can be comfortable at home, in your own skin.
But when you’re not, and you want something, we call that greed. It’s greedy, it wants something. Now that wanting to just be comfortable, that’s fine. But when you start to watch the mind, you’ll notice that it’s got a lot of agendas on the greed spectrum. Greed is not quite the same as ambition. It has to do with more for me, more of what I want for me. And it is toxic. The more you’re sucked into greed, the more egotistical you become, the more it’s all about me, the more you’re willing to sort of lose your own ethical foundation to get a particular result, only to find that even that result’s not really satisfying. So you’re onto the next result, and it’s a never ending trajectory. But nevertheless, we have to admit, it’s here all the time. It’s not like, “Oh, I’ve transcended greed.” I don’t think we do transcend greed, but we can transform how we are in relationship to it. And with awareness, the greed doesn’t have to run us. And even if it’s attenuated 5% or 10%. Wow, that would be its own form of liberation, nevermind 30% or 40% or 50%.
Aversion
Then there’s this other thing that you’ll also notice, which is you’re sitting there and the opposite will come up, “What I don’t want. What I’m afraid of.” What I need to keep at the door, keep at bay, to push away.“ That’s collectively referred to as aversion, or dislike, or hatred when it’s really strong and directed often at other people or whatever. It’s so bloody boring to sit here and watch my breathing. All right. So what? Who thinks it’s boring? Have you looked at your boredom? So have you looked at your aversion? Then as soon as the you that’s looking at your aversion, that’s more like awareness. It’s like awareness of aversion isn’t aversive. Awareness of greed isn’t greedy.
Delusion
Then there’s another one which is the madness that passes for the scenario in our heads. And that’s often spoken of as illusion or delusion. Half-baked explanation about everything and who we are and where things are going, and what’s wrong with the world, and what’s wrong with my family, and all of that is kind of none of it’s true. None of it’s true, but we believe it. That narrative mode and that mind-wandering default mode network that’s like, “Our favorite pastime, the story of me.” And it’s diluted. And it also drains a huge amount of energy. So we can bring mindfulness to greed, and the greed can be attenuated or liberated mindfulness to aversion. And the aversion could be attenuated or liberated. Or mindfulness to our own diluted nature, thoughts and emotions, and so forth, and that is liberating of them. Then what do you have left? You, as pure awareness, fully embodied.
What’s comes next? I don’t know. You’re writing the script. It’s not like, “Oh, then you’ll feel this. And you’ll feel that. And you’ll be enlightened and everybody will bow down to you. And you will never have to have any kind of challenges or difficulty. The full catastrophe will evaporate forever.” No. It’ll be the same old, same old only. You won’t be the same old, same old, because you’ll be the same you, you’ll have the same bank account. You’ll have the same social security number. You’ll have the same face in the mirror, it’d be aging every day. But you will be in wiser relationship to your possibilities, and to your embodied, enacted, unfolding of those possibilities moment by moment. And that means life lived fully while you have the chance, while we have the chance. And there’s no script for this, but if you can be on the lookout for the times when we contract or are driven by greed, contract or are driven by aversion, liking, disliking, wanting, not wanting. And the stories we tell ourselves that are at least half not true. It’s not like it will take 30 years of meditating in a cave in the Himalayas with water dripping on your head to realize the potential for your life to flower. And flower, not just for yourself, but in relationship to everybody else. It’s available to all of us right in this moment. And that’s what mindfulness practice really is.