The Trauma of Everyday Life

cast about for someone or something to blame. Buddhist culture has unwittingly replicated his defensive maneuver. Why not blame the women? Or sexuality? Or both? In responding in this way, Yasa was actually mimicking the Buddha’s own initial tendencies, and this is undoubtedly why their stories have become conflated. He was making the same mistake that the Buddha had made, one that had taken him six years to correct. For the Buddha, too, sought first to deal with the trauma of everyday life by taking extreme measures. He also felt that things were fearful and horrible and that he was “not safe,” and he tried whatever he could find to make those feelings go away. But by the time Yasa came to him, he had established a different approach. He had found a way to make the experience of groundlessness nourishing rather than frightening.
    On my most recent retreat at the Forest Refuge, a year after the one filled with anxious dreams, I had a moment that reminded me of Yasa. Perhaps it is too much of a stretch to make the comparison—it is not as though there were female musicians in states of disarray to frighten me in the middle of the night—but I did have an experience of the ground being pulled out from under me, and I could sense how unnerving it could be. It happened at breakfast toward the end of my week there. I had been craving toast for several days. The food had been remarkably good, but I had gotten it in my head that what was lacking was fresh-baked bread. It didn’t seem like such a big thing to wish for—the vegetarian meals just needed this one little touch to feel complete. On this morning, six days into my stay, the bread finally appeared. Granted, it was gluten free and made from chickpea flour, but it still looked good. I cut myself a slice, toasted and buttered it, took a little bit of apricot jam, made myself a cup of tea, and settled silently into my seat to relish it all. I was very mindful and lifted the toast to my lips to take a bite. It was delicious. I chewed and tasted and swallowed and noticed how I wanted the next bite before I had completely finished the first. When the sweetness faded and the remnants of toast turned to cardboard in my mouth, I was ready for more. I waited, though, remembering the instructions for mindful eating: Finish each mouthful completely before taking the next bite.
    I have only a vague recollection of what happened next. I believe my mind wandered to the laundry I had to do the next morning. There wasn’t that much to think about anymore, but that didn’t seem to be stopping me. Would I do one load or two? Could I put them both in at the same time? My wife would be happy if I came home with all my clothes washed. The next thing I remember was that my toast was gone. “Who ate my toast?” my mind cried as I stared at my empty plate. And for a brief second, before the humor of the situation could take hold, the whole thing became a metaphor for my entire life. Ready to relish it and it was already gone. I was staring into a big, empty, devouring hole where my toast, and my life, used to be. “Who ate my toast?” I repeated once again as I swiped my finger at the few crumbs left on the plate.
    I had an immediate identification with Yasa. “It is fearful, it is horrible!” I understood where he was coming from. He had seen the dark side of his female attendants and I had witnessed the disappearance of my toast. The yawning jaws of death were all around me and I had a choice. I could panic or I could return to my mindfulness. I decided to go for a walk.
    In the early 1980s, a Dutch psychologist named Johan Barendregt wrote a paper on the origin of phobias that is relevant to the Buddha’s conversation with Yasa and to my lost breakfast moment. Barendregt proposed that phobias and related fears have their origins in intimations of groundlessness. Like Yasa glimpsing the traumatic underpinnings of life, or me staring into the place where my toast used to be, these perceptions of the impermanent and impersonal nature of things strip away the absolutisms of daily life that we rely upon. Such glimpses come unpredictably and in many guises. They may appear when people are smoking marijuana or traveling in a foreign country or listening to music or sitting in church. Most people cannot handle them and rush to replace them with something they
can
handle, even if it is an obsessive fear or anxiety. The beast we know is better than the one we do not. Barendregt