THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

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“In The Road Less Traveled”, M. Scott Peck offers a thought-provoking look at human growth and spiritual development. He contends that embracing discipline—delaying gratification, accepting responsibility, and pursuing truth—is key to solving the challenges that lead to genuine growth. Yet discipline alone is not enough; Peck emphasizes that genuine love, transcending neediness, fosters the self-acceptance vital for nurturing others’ spiritual progress.

(M. Scott Peck The Road Less Traveled)

The other week I was stymied when the theme for my blog about manifesting what I wanted in life ran afoul of Buddhist teachings. It was also refuted by my life experience, i.e. despite my best intentions, a bear wiped out my hummingbird feeder. There was nothing for it but to dive a little deeper into the Buddha’s teachings on the cause of suffering.

“The Buddha taught that life involves dukkha—a Pali word usually translated as “suffering,” but which also means unsatisfactoriness, impermanence, or a deep sense that things are incomplete. This concept forms the core of his Four Noble Truths, which explain why we struggle and how we can find peace.” (AI Overview)

I had forgotten so much of the Buddha’s advice as to feel like I’d made a major discovery when I revisited his teachings on dukkha, a Pali word generally translated as suffering. Yes, I recalled that attachment to pleasurable things/experiences, and the aversion to unpleasantness/disappointment were cited as the cause of suffering, but I hadn’t registered the subtlety with which these cravings pervaded my life.

What gave me pause was the expanded definition of suffering, “which also means unsatisfactoriness, impermanence, or a deep sense that things are incomplete”.

This came as a big AHA! moment because I’d just had a conversation with a friend about this sense of dissatisfaction and/or incompleteness. I had even expressed the idea that one can try to appease this nagging voice that claims something is missing (if one even has a clue what it wants), or somehow tell it to JUST. SHUT. UP.

Little did I know that the latter was not only a distinct possibility, but also the key to ending the patterns and habits that heretofore have been the cause of many, if not all of my problems! I can hardly describe the feeling of elation that this insight gave me. Not only did I better understand the nature of suffering, but in the Buddha’s “noble eightfold path”was given a roadmap to freedom from a lifetime of serving the wrong master, my ego and its cravings.

Back to the internet, I read: “the Law of Attraction amplifies the ego and increases attachment, whereas Buddhism teaches radical letting go and the realization of emptiness.”

In our conversation the other day my friend and I had been skirting around this emptiness, this lack of things to do, places to go, or people to meet. The avoidance of this emptiness could even be disguised as a sense of purpose, but which could more realistically be seen as the avoidance of loneliness, solitude, or ambiguity.

Pema Chödrön, an eminent Buddhist teacher offers this:

“Cool loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggression at our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be. We give it up and just look directly with compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat and heartache, no punishment.”

In the process of learning to transcend my ego, I need the courage to sit with the uncomfortable feelings of unsatisfactoriness, impermanence, or the sense that things are incomplete. I’m learning give up on the idea that I might in some way fix or change things in order to find peace of mind, to chase discomfort away. The trick is to find peace of mind in the thick of my own racing thoughts and conflicting cravings. I can develop the mental disciplines of mindfulness and meditation to steer me along the noble eightfold path, which happens to be anathema to the law of attraction.

No wonder it’s called the road less traveled!