The Snake in the Bamboo Tube

On my way to Tassajara, I spent a morning at the San Francisco Zen center and was honored to attend a dharma talk with the roshi of the center. She talked about the challenging places that humans find themselves when confronted with difficult emotions.  Her metaphor for this human suffering was a snake in a bamboo tube. 

Being no different from this snake, I could feel the  helplessness, confusion and desperation of the snake in this container. No air to breath, no way to move forward or to move back. Ensnared by suffering.

When humans struggle to be rid of uncomfortable emotions, they struggle like the snake in the bamboo tube. One cannot run from one self.

No space to breathe, just thrashing about harming themselves in their effort to be free of the truth of what has arrived on their path.

At the time I was experiencing deep grief. It had become a solid mass of pain in my body.

When discomfort or intense sensations come my way, my deep strong habit is to fix. “I will just fix this thing "out here", and then I will feel more comfortable "in here.” And after years of being an excellent fixer, I put this habit of fixing with all its obsessive energy to work on my grief. 

The loss I was experiencing was profound and so painful. It could not stay in my body. I could not breath. There was no space. I had lost the future. I was trapped in the past. Like that snake. 

All my attempts to fix increased my  confusion.  When faced with the acceptance of loss, I reflexibly choose confusion. It was my default. Maybe I could say....confusion arrived uninvited. 

 The snake was still thrashing in the tube. I would try my old habit of "trying harder." This manifested as my  mind generating obsessive stories: day and night. All the air was sucked out of the tube.

 My strongest reaction was to ask “why”.....like this question would deliver some control over loss.  I thought the question “why” would contain the information I needed to escape the truth of this reality in my life. As I tried harder , the space became smaller. 

 My ignorance lay in the belief that I felt that I could make this grief go away by using my thoughts and I could get away with not having to have a deep loving relationship with loss.

None of my habits of fixing, none of my habits of distraction, none of my habits of analyzing, none of my habis of trying harder, none of my habits of distracting myself from my discomfort worked.
I was wiggling desperately.  I could not escape. And believe me......I was banging at the problem..... shoving it away, harming myself every day with obsessive thoughts on how to make sense of it. I just wanted my body to rest and my mind to find peace.

In time, I started to understand that the conditions of loss were not all created by me.

My friends and family had all but abandoned me....no one could manage the level of my suffering....they were desperate for me to heal, so they would not have to suffer anymore. No one could just sit with me and witness this pain in my life.

I was alone. I felt broken and unlovable.

In despair of ever being understood, I started to isolate....deeper in the bamboo tube.

It took me a while to realize that my usual strategies were escalating the suffering. A friend of mine said to me, “if you haven’t solved this problem with all the time and energy you have put into it; then you must be working on the wrong problem”. As irritating as I found this to be....I do not like “not knowing” or “not being right”; I was grateful to have this friend that had sat and witnessed my pain and I respected her insight. 

It was a journey. I learned along the way that to heal, I would need to figure out exactly “what it is?’ ....not why it is?....not “how it is”...but “what is it? I needed to have a very private and intimate relationship with my grief or I would be “stuck in this tube ” forever. It was about engaging in an intimate relationship with my direct experience of "it". Leave the thoughts and enter the body.

I lived in a big arbutus forest at the time, and one day I just walked into the forest and sat down on the ground. I was just the snake laying limp in the tube...with no more fight in me. I was now ready to surrender. I decided to sit there forever.

Well, I did sit for a long time. Every time my mind started stories of anger, sadness, and fixing....I just watched and listened to the stories I told myself. I just watched and listened.....my witness to myself .....”there is that angry story again....let it go, it does not help....there is that story of sadness...let it go, it does not help". I witnessed  the confusion and recognized the stories that I wanted to believe...the stories that I thought would remove me from my internal pain. Finally, I was able to turn myself toward the pain.....I opened my arms and heart, took a deep, deep breath, and said “come to me, I am ready to just sit still with you”....I was frightened but there were no other options. The most amazing thing happened. On the in breath, I invited it forward.... I turned towards it and leaned in to it, as one would do with a strong wind.....I braced...but felt no resistance. I felt heat. My body felt like it was on fire.....deep heat everywhere in my body. The healing had begun.

That is when I started to build a bigger container for the snake. I started to breath space into the tube. Every time my foot hit the ground, I would breath into the wound in my heart.

This was my meditation. I started to stay like a log with my suffering. This was my quiet, private opening to the pain in my life......the embracing and releasing of the pain that has been entrusted to me.

I would learn to be patient with myself. Patience being, nothing to do, other than not fear what is ultimately true. As I grew more accepting of what had been laid on my path and less involved with the plans to get rid of it, my container became bigger....my heart became bigger, my grief stayed the same. I could breath now. The snake remained in the tube but now was quiet and restful.....accepting of its container.

When I feel the constriction arise, I can sometimes find the wound in my heart and breath cool air into it. I expand the bamboo tube so the snake can move freely. This takes mindfulness and I always must pause and find my breath.

I aspire to stay open, receptive and soft bellied towards my life. This pain I now carry through my life is just part of who I am....it has made me more compassionate towards others...it was a gift... not one I would have asked for....but one I was given anyway.

Once inside the bamboo tube the snake learns a new way.

gassho