This morning I went for a swim in a local lake. It is early December, the weather has just turned colder, and the water at 8 degrees is so cold it stings my skin. As I approach the water and feel the first touch of the cold on my feet and ankles, I find myself remembering holidays in the Mediterranean years before, getting into much warmer pools while the sun beat down on the back of my head. It wasn’t with a sense of longing that I remembered these times, but with a recollection of how difficult it had been to get into the relatively warm water then; I remembered squealing and fussing, resisting the urges and shouts of encouragement from my family, feeling how my body tried to escape the sensations of the cooler water, which might have been welcome while the air was so hot. Yet I resisted and avoided the splashes from my children as I inched into the water slowly, feeling as if each millimeter of skin was trying to crawl away upwards, away from the shock of the cooler water. As if my very bones wanted to escape the cold as it crept up my back and around my midriff, while my shoulders hunched and tensed.
This morning though, as I stepped into the chilly lake there was no fussing. No squealing. No avoiding and tensing, and yet the water and surrounding air were much, much colder. So what is different?
I have been wild swimming most of this year, throughout the hot, hot summer days when the cool water felt like a balm, and on into the autumn, when the water and air turned chillier. Each swim has been joyful, each time has been an adventure. In the summer I swam in the Dales below waterfalls that sparkled in the summer sunlight, where I could lie on the warm golden rocks to dry out. In autumn I swam in hidden, magical lakes with water cool and clear to the bottom, while the mist hung fractionally above the surface and I came out shivering with a cold in my bones that lasted until I hiked back up the hill, hot and sweating again. The water has got colder week by week until now, at 8 degrees the water feels sharp on my skin. My fingers ache with cold. It seems to bite at my legs, at the bare skin on my arms, and dig into my sides through the material of my swimsuit. Today’s lake was long, narrow and murky, full of water lilies that I swam around like I was in a Monet painting, while my toes slowly lost feeling and the skin on my face glowed and tingled with the cold air. But getting into this lake wasn’t nearly as difficult as those earlier, warmer times years before, and I allowed the silky cold of the water to slide up my body as I sank into it. I was intrigued how it would be this time and revelled in the tingling, spiking sensations on the skin, fascinated by all that I could see, hear, smell and feel. Senses alive. No resistance. No fear of the sensations. Just a sense of curiosity. A wonder in the strangeness. A sense of questioning in the mind – how does it feel today?
Resisting things as they are is our normal tendency, and it seems to make sense as we do it – after all who would like to feel physical or emotional pain? – but when we resist things they cause more suffering. Sinking into the cold water and being curious about how it feels, but without labelling it as pain, gives the experience a different sense. It still bites, the skin still hurts and then goes numb. But the sensation isn't pain unless I call it pain. And calling it pain causes my body to respond by tensing and resisting, instead of sinking and softening into the sensations. Naming it as pain makes my shoulders tense and my breathing change as I resist and try to avoid it. Being curious about it instead lets me experience it as it is. Without fear of the sensations, just knowing them exactly as they are, without the labels and narration in the mind.
The Buddha talks about the two arrows that a person feels when they experience pain. The first arrow of pain is real and cannot be avoided – my skin stings when I enter the cold water. But the second arrow is one in the mind – my resistance, the stories I add, the labels I put on it by calling it pain, the resistance caused by fear of the sensations of cold and fear of my body’s reaction to that cold.
So wild swimming is a lot like practice, or perhaps practice is a lot like wild swimming. I need to bring the same sense of curiosity to my experiences in meditation and everyday practice as I do to my experiences of wild swimming. Today when I was putting things away before coming to write I felt my stomach tighten and my body lean forward in a sense of hurry. Pausing, I could notice this and open to a sense of curiosity about my experience at that moment. I slowed down and allowed the tingle of energy in my arms to speak, to tell me that I wanted to hurry up, to get this boring part over but that I also wanted to have a tidy room because I thought it showed something about the sort of person I am – I noticed how that thought came with a tightening in my jaw along with messages from the past and an attempt to impress someone. Opening in this way allowed the experience to change and my senses to slow down and open. The experience of that moment came into sharp focus – the texture of the corduroy in the skirt as I hung it on the hanger, the colours of the material overlapping in dark and light, the sensations of my feet on the carpet and my hands moving slowly to open the clips on the hanger. A perfect moment.
Some experiences feel so much more difficult to be with however, especially when I don’t even realize what it is that I am resisting. This week I felt an emotional resistance to the discomfort caused by my daughter’s distress. This is another sort of pain. This sort of pain comes with stories of who I am in relation to her – a good/bad mum, a supportive/selfish, kind/thoughtless person, a good/bad zen student – and this is a whole extra layer that is not always easy to see. There are thoughts in the mind and reactions in the body: tightening sensations and feelings that I can label as emotional pain. But the question still remains: can I soften and sink into the sensations – physical, emotional and in the mind – without resisting them?
When my daughter suffers I feel a thump in my chest, a tensing in my belly, an upwelling of tears and an urge to make it better as I add onto this the layers of what this means, thoughts of how I should be able to make it better, stories of how I need to behave to be a good mum, fears around what this current distress means about her future, and fears about my future experience of her future distress. I can try to resist this, try to hide or escape from it, try to squash or ignore the feelings or thoughts, wish that it was otherwise, but doing this makes the stories and fears in my mind proliferate and grow until my gut churns. It makes my shoulders ache as I tense upwards, trying to escape the sensations and fears that have become tangled into a ball of pain and distress. Alternatively, I can sink into all these thoughts and sensations with curiosity. Not to wallow in it or solve it. Not to make it go away, just to know it exactly as it is. I can let myself feel the pulse in my heart and ache in the throat in response to her pain, know the urge to make it better, see the thoughts arise. Not resisting it. Sinking, softening into it all with that same sense of questioning - how are things today? Things are as they are.
Appendix
Excerpt from Sallatha Sutta
When an ordinary person experiences a painful bodily feeling they worry, agonize, and feel distraught… As they are touched by that painful feeling, they are resistant. Any resistance-obsession with regard to that painful feeling obsesses them… Then they feel two types of pain, one physical and one mental. It’s as if this person were pierced by an arrow, and then immediately afterward by a second arrow, and they experience the pain of two arrows.
When a wise person experiences a painful bodily feeling, they don’t worry, agonize, and feel distraught, and they feel physical pain but not mental pain. It’s as if this person were pierced by an arrow, but a second arrow didn’t follow it, so they only experience the pain of a single arrow… As this person is touched by that painful feeling, they are not resistant. No resistance-obsession with regard to that painful feeling obsesses them.
The full sutta is a surprising short one and can be found at: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn36/sn36.006.than.html
Sallatha Sutta: The Arrow, translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
