How
I Got This Way
Gerry Kopelow
This
is the true story of a question asked and answered over a period
of some forty five years. The very first conscious thought that
I can remember is: “Why am I unhappy, and why are the people
around me unhappy?” Starting at age three or four I undertook
an ardent, non-stop search for the answer.
I
was born into a lower middle class Jewish family. They were performance-oriented,
materialistic security-seekers, they had big expectations of children,
and they were entirely secretive about the past. Like many Jewish
families most of our European
relatives had been killed during the war and the survivors in North
America were badly traumatized. Since I didn’t know
all this when I was small, the past was a riddle silently bestowed
upon me. It was my nature just to absorb these things without
complaint. I was a very benign little boy. I did not blame the world
for my unhappiness, but I was extremely motivated to find a reason
for it. Why this was so I have no idea, except to make the assumption
that there must have been a strong karmic
proclivity at work.
I
went to school and I did what my parents told me to do for the first
few years. As soon as I could, however, I diverged from my parents’
plan and undertook pursuits that seemed to me both relevant to my
basic inquiry and also culturally worthwhile. I
became an artist, I became a musician, I became a scientist. I was
a smart kid and excelled at everything I turned my hand to. I used
to enter science fairs to earn money: My summer job through high
school was working at the Physics Lab at the
University of Manitoba. I taught myself classical guitar and went
to Spain a couple of times to have instruments made for me. I took
up photography and by the time I was eighteen, I was the youngest
person in Canada to have received a Canada Council
grant. That was more than thirty years ago. As this is being written,
I am fifty-one years old.
My
aggressive cultural pursuits provided moments of joy, but no answers.
I believe I was blocked from extracting or receiving anything particularly
illuminating from Jewish tradition simply because all the beings
around me were so deeply involved in
suffering. It hadn’t helped them and so I reacted against
it.
I
did very poorly academically. All through high school I watched
every late movie every night. In the morning I would go to school,
take the desk farthest away from the teacher and put my head down
and sleep. And in the afternoon I would read. The school library
had a collection of impressively bound volumes called The Great
Books of the Western World and over a period of a couple of years
I worked my way through them: Nietzsche,
Freud, Plato, Descartes - lots of serious stuff. Even though the
ideas were intellectually dazzling I did not find in them
what I was looking for. The question remained stuck in my
mind: “Why am I unhappy and why are the beings around me unhappy?”
Grade
Twelve French was my downfall - I actually failed high school.
Almost
by accident the answer began to unfold through art. Back in grade
eight I was such a solemn little guy that a kind teacher was moved
to try and cheer me up. She was a photography enthusiast and
so, after a couple of false starts with other
diversions, she handed me her camera and said, “Try this maybe,
you’ll like it.” And I did.
The
first few frames that I took were quite artful. My abilities developed
quickly. Soon I was regularly extracting photographically interesting
configurations from the events
unfolding around me. In fact, I worked at photography so intensely
that two technical constraints inherent in the process began to
shape my consciousness, my way of being in the world. First, I developed
a keen interest in sharpness and detail and
so had to learn to hold the camera really steady for long periods
of time. And second, since I was making photographs of people in
real-life situations I had to develop quick reflexes and very sharp
observational skills. By virtue of these two techniques I was moving
inexorably toward meditation and mindfulness, neither of which,
of course, I had ever heard of.
In
the service of art I developed phenomenal concentration and the
ability to hold my body absolutely still. I was obsessed with capturing
the ‘decisive moment’. Several years of diligent work
brought this state of affairs to a very high pitch, and I
experienced a breakthrough while shooting a portrait of a couple
of friends. During that particular decisive moment I fell into a
state of total absorption. I set the camera aside, struck by the
realization that it was possible to fully experience reality without
the use of a machine. My life as an artist ended at that exact moment.
I was nineteen years old.
So
I started to inch toward enjoyment of simply being alive. Nevertheless,
the power of cultural conditioning and the fear of failure can seem
like irresistible forces; after some heroic remedial efforts I got
myself into university. It was the time of Flower Power and I was
a hippie, living with friends in a communal house. There was sex,
drugs, and rock and roll; experiencing experiences rather than undertaking
intellectual disciplines was the order of the day. These pursuits
provided some memorable moments of joy as well, but still no answer
to the big question. I was becoming impatient.
I
began to think that if relief from suffering was not available through
artistic, intellectual, or hedonistic means perhaps it would yield
to straightforward mechanical intervention. I made a list of troublesome
elements in my life, and resolved that one by one, I would either
fix or eliminate them. Since I’d always disliked being overweight,
I started with my body. I I began a fast of Biblical proportions
- six weeks, water only, plus daily
exercise. I lost 100 pounds. It was an amazing episode.
After
a couple of weeks without food the body becomes quiet and cool.
Physical activity is possible only by animating the appropriate
muscles through force of will. Since this is hard work, staying
very still all the time seems like a good idea. I quickly learned
that when the body is not busy with digesting food or moving about,
consciousness becomes free to pay exquisite attention to whatever
is of interest. Hot pursuit of
photographic truth had brought me very close, but now I was able
to become totally involved in the present moment. Much to my delight,
I discovered that the consequence of this kind of intense concentration
is bliss.....life is very rich under intense scrutiny.
Naturally
I wanted to sustain that state of sharp observation and the blissful
feelings that were associated with it but I found that every time
I took a breath the effort and the
movement pulled me away. In order to maintain concentration I worked
to make my breathing slower and smoother. After a couple of weeks
of training the motion of my lungs became nearly imperceptible and
was no longer a problem. Surprisingly, the
resulting increase in sensitivity revealed the action of my heart
to be just as annoying as uncontrolled breathing had been. The sensation
of each pulse as it moved through the body pulled me away from awareness.
With a little experimentation, however, I found that there was a
certain spot between the in-breath and the out-breath through which
I was able to gain control of the heartbeat and make it slow, steady,
and quiet as well.
A
few days later I was sitting on the sofa in my parents’ house,
a guest at the birthday celebration of one of my siblings. I must
have looked fairly normal sitting there doing my deep breathing
since none of the forty or so people in the room took any notice.
All of a sudden I realized that with no special effort I was following
fifteen different conversations simultaneously. I had entered samadhi,
a state in which consciousness merges with the object of its attention.
I had investigated art, science, and the the philosophy of the Western
World, but had never encountered anything like this. Of course,
I was completely ignorant of what I later found out to be
esoteric systems of spiritual development that had been around for
thousands of years.
A
week later I became sick with an ear infection but, by this
time I felt I had found my answer. The pain associated with the
ear infection was not an issue, because my concentration was so
strong that I could just ignore it. In fact there was no
suffering of any sort. A friend in medical school dropped by to
make sure I wasn’t about to drop dead: He told me I would
likely get meningitis and die unless I did something. Despite my
blissfully indifferent state he talked me into a course of antibiotics.
Shortly after I slowly got back into eating. To my dismay, returning
to the world was accompanied by a receding of the blissful states
I coveted.
A
small book about Hatha Yoga appeared in our house and I realized
that I had been trying to reinvent a very ancient wheel. I decided
to try and re experience blissful consciousness by way of health
and strength rather than self-denial and mortifications. I became
a student of both the physical and mental yogic practises and became
sufficiently adept to teach. All in all I spent ten years trying
to maintain what I thought were highly desirable states of mind,
and succeeded, to a degree. One can experience these states for
a time but it takes great effort, great concentration, and perfect
circumstances. That’s why monks live apart from the world.
Renunciation is not
intrinsically a more evolved form life, it’s just a life style
wherein fewer buttons are being pushed. One is able to concentrate
with greater ease.
No
matter how hard I tried, I could not maintain blissful states all
the time. Eventually I came to realize that there was a fundamental
suffering embedded in bliss - the knowledge that sooner or later,
bliss will end. All things are impermanent.
Around
this time I first encountered my teacher, a Buddhist Master known
as the Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche. Buddhist philosophy is
based on the notion that wholesome mental states are achievable
through training, through mental development,
through concentration. The mistake that causes suffering is
trying to sustain things that are by their nature unsustainable.
Everything in life is absolutely variable,
absolutely impermanent. There is, or course, nothing wrong with
aspiring to experience happiness, nothing wrong with aspiring to
experience joy. The mistake is to try to grab on to wholesome states
and to struggle to maintain them, regardless of circumstances. That’s
the fundamental Buddhist view.
So
I have my answer. Under my teacher's tutelage, I shifted my practices
to the ones that are recommended in the Buddhist meditational traditions.
I work to develop the strength to focus my mind on wholesome states,
and to develop the equanimity to
calmly abide when wholesome states prove elusive. Now I teach others
how to do the same.The last several years have been very productive
and very enjoyable.
