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Loneliness and the highest yoga of love with Susan Gillis Chapman

 

The spiritual journey is not all love and light. The more one commits to waking up, the more life is punctuated by times of intense loneliness and a longing to be liberated from the sense of separateness. The nature of love is expansive and free flowing. Only when we fixate and try to constrain it does it become transactional and begin to sour. Without warning the transcendent joy of a passionate love affair can turn to self doubt and neediness

According to the Buddhist tantric tradition, love is a vast storehouse of energy that exists beyond the dualistic barrier of ego clinging or relationship status and is available to all who are brave enough to seek its truth. By becoming familiar with the open nature of love we can dance and communicate with others with greater delight and ease. In this episode of Awake In Relationship I speak with Buddhist author, teacher and returning guest, Susan Gillis Chapman on the non dual, indestructible nature of love and cutting through ego’s obsessive strategy to possess it.

Show Notes

If you enjoyed this discussion on the highest yoga of love with Susan be sure to check out episode 043 on fear as a stepping stone to fearless love

 

Episode Transcripts

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

In some ways, I think the thing that we’re most afraid of is the bliss of love. You know, we think that it’s what we want, but when, you know, and the word bliss is used in the kind of higher tantras, I guess. And again, it can be just as simple as noticing with our eyes or smelling or hearing. And, you know, there are sense perceptions being completely awake, to whatever the so-called object is, and there’s just this joy.

Silas Rose: 

My name is Salas Rose, and I welcome you to another episode of Awake In Relationship. Anyone who’s committed themselves to a path, a path of growth, that could be spiritually or personal development, knows that it’s not all love and light. The journey is often punctuated by intense periods of loneliness and longing. This experience is more than the absence of company or the desire for a lover or a mate. It touches something very fundamental in our human nature, which might be called the tender heart of sadness. Our basic nature contains a vast storehouse of love and compassion that just longs to be free. I believe so much of what motivates us to be in relationship is to have access to that storehouse. In the purest sense, love is a liberating force, liberating us from the constraints of ego fixation. However, when boundless love becomes transactional, or object-oriented, it turns into something else. Fear, self-doubt, and poverty mind enter. And the more we try to grasp and hold on to love, the more it slips from our fingers. In this episode of Awake In Relationship, I welcome back Susan Gillis Chapman, Buddhist teacher and author of The Five Keys of Mindful Communication. W hich I s Up, in this conversation we discuss the tantric view of love, according to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and working with loneliness, fixation, and longing on the path. If you tuned into previous episodes with Susan, you’ll know that she’s a wealth of wisdom in all matters of the heart. Enjoy.

Silas Rose: 

Susan, it’s been a long time. Welcome back to the show.

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

It’s great to be back, Silas.

Silas Rose: 

Yeah. Thank you. So you’ve been busy. You just released a new book, and maybe you could talk a little bit about that and just how it’s been received in the past year.

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

Well, thank you. Yeah, actually, it’s been about a year since the Which Way Is Up book was published, and it’s Since then, I’ve done a few programs, including one, I think, in Victoria with you guys, that helps me get a feel for how it’s landing for people. And the basic idea of the book was to present my personal journey through cancer as a way of allowing the reader to hopefully create their own It’s sort of a spiritual autobiography to allow the reader to perhaps recognize their own journey through a bardo, bardo meaning any kind of intense transition in your life that can be frightening. And I’ve given some teachings on the three kinds of fear, the fear that wakes you up, and the fear that freezes you. And the third is the background core fear that we’re not good enough. So that’s a very quick synopsis, but I’ve been enjoying that. And it does take me to a different place. I’ve taught about this book and about these topics a few times over the last few years, and where I’ve landed now is I really want to stay for now at least, focused on the topic of loving presence and looking at the kind of background flow of love and loving kindness as being really kind of our essential lifeblood as human beings. And that is a, that’s more fundamental than our sense of ego or separation. So that actually brought me back to what awoke me up to the Buddhist path 51 years ago was encountering a teaching by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche that was published in a magazine called Garuda. And it was a transcript of a talk that he gave on passion. and love and the energy. And so I found that going right back to those roots of what inspired me as a young person, it really animates where I feel, yeah, I want to really pursue that further in terms of my own contemplation and my own practice of just, what is it like to just open and be present with love.

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

So was that great article, was that republished in The Myth of Freedom, th by Chogyam Trungpa ? That’s right. Yeah, it was slightly edited and republished in a chapter called Love.

Silas Rose: 

I’m holding the book right now, The Myth of Freedom. And that was really my kind of first introduction to Trungpa Rinpoches tI was the iron hook that kind of drew me further into the Dharma and to the path I’m on now. So it’s kind of somewhat auspicious that we were both drawn in by the same set of teachings.

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

Well, it was very powerful because I think these teachings that were given so long ago at the very beginning of Rinpoche’s working with the students, were in some ways very profound, and you could say the highest if you want to use that language, but very profound teachings. It awakens something in us that we can’t conceptualize, but we’re drawn to it. To me, that’s the power of it. Even though he provides a lot of conceptual architecture, the actual inspiration is something beyond what you can talk about, but you feel it, and you know it, and you trust it.

Silas Rose: 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and so today’s topic is really going kind of deep into the topic of love, and essentially the tantric view of what love really is. I’m wondering when you feel the essential contrast that Trungpa Rinpoche kind of communicates in this set of teachings that’s sort of in contrast with our habitual notion of what love is?

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

Well, I think what he did, for instance, the very opening, let me just, I have a copy of this here, too. I just want to describe, like, the very opening words that grabbed me was this couple of sentences that says, There’s a vast store of energy which is not centered, which is not ego’s energy at all. It is this energy which is the centerless dance of phenomena, the universe interpenetrating and making love to itself. It has two characteristics, a fire quality of warmth and a tendency to flow in a particular pattern. And then later he says, So again, you know, The language I was using with my book was talking about the contrast between awake fear and frozen fear. And here, I realized that fear is, you could say, even secondary to this word love, that this energy could be considered primordial, you know, and that the awake energy is what comes first. And I think for myself, going back to when I was in my early 20s, I had gone through a really deep depression because of witnessing my parents’ divorce. And also, it had lots of different flirtations or experiences of relationship and love and sexuality, and it always seemed to end up on a note of someone, either they’re running away or I’m running away. And so it was like, this was this koan. Is there such a thing as love? And what is that? And is it possible? It feels like this energy is trustworthy because it’s so good, but it also doesn’t seem to really work. And The way that Trungpa Rinpoche presents it is like, yes, you can trust that. There’s something you can trust about this energy. However, when it doesn’t work, you can understand that that’s because of fear. That’s because of freezing or stagnation. And it’s not only your fear. It could be the other person. There’s another really beautiful section here where he says, sometimes you can see through fear. another person’s goodness. You see them better than they see themselves, and that freaks them out, and they run away. And he says, you know, it’s not your problem that you’re seeing something good, but the fact that they can’t handle it, you have to let them go. So I think that, going back to your question, the point here is that there’s something that can only really be experienced when there’s no grasping when there is this kind of fluid quality. And when things freeze is when our normal, dualistic, love song-ridden culture, most of what we experience, begins to happen at that point of stagnation or trying to take energy that’s not naturally, solid and solidifying it.

Silas Rose: 

I think it’d be helpful to kind of zoom out in terms of that free-flowing energy that really very much relates to the notion of tantra, what I’ve heard defined as continuity. It might be actually helpful just to talk a bit about the view of tantra from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective.

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

Well, I’m just the first thoughts come to my mind. My understanding of tantra, it’s like the relationship or union of opposites. In other words, we don’t have to be a battleground between the good part of me and the bad part of me. There is a way of expanding or even returning to an original experience might be closer to what an infant has where Everything we experience is unfiltered by opinions, by judgments, by the whole kind of division into is this a friend, is this an enemy, or is this someone to ignore? And so all of that sense of the, all of those opposites, the things we hope for, the things we fear, if we can relax that and find that space in which there is a dance, that’s not choreographed by hope and fear, by dualistic. So it’s a much more profound level, I think. The symbolism of tantra in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition might bear some similarity to other examples of spiritual tantra, like in Hinduism. I don’t know much about Hinduism, but… When we see deities in union, for instance, all of that is symbolic. So it’s all describing different stages in the cultivation of a experience of not being separate from your moment-to-moment awareness. So for instance, if you see a masculine and feminine deity in union, deity represents compassion and the feminine deity represents wisdom. They’re all completely imbued with different symbolic levels of what that means. And the union is then when wisdom and compassion are completely united, this is what wakefulness is. This is what, if we go back, we could say that that original flow of passion that Trungpa Rinpoche was talking about would have this quality of the union. of wisdom and compassion. And I think that’s one reason I wanted to kind of rest on that for a while for myself, is that often when we talk about spiritual accomplishment or emptiness, it doesn’t have warmth to it. And I think my favorite word that I heard from Trungpa Rinpoche was, You know, if you have affection for every moment of your experience, I think that’s this kind of egolessness that has warmth to it. And it has a lot to do with sense perceptions. It has a lot to do with being alone. In some ways, it’s like Thomas Merton describing aloneness as the way of connecting with others. as opposed to isolation?

Silas Rose: 

Well, it’s interesting you mention Thomas Merton, because a lot of sages, past, present, have really written great poems and treatise on loneliness, and they describe it as kind of a divine longing.

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

What is it that we’re longing for? A I think asking that question is itself an opportunity to awaken to that free-flowing love. And probably the stories of Jesus going into the desert or the monastic tradition of people choosing celibacy or loneliness as a foundation for being able to discover love in the true sense, because we’re so addicted to the highs and lows of conventional love, but most of what we’re doing is trying to escape our loneliness, which doesn’t really help. When another person is objectified as the solution to your loneliness, then they don’t have much of a chance of really being loved, nor do we. I think there’s a really interesting point to be made about solitude being the way whether we do it by sitting down and meditating for a period of time every day or going for a walk, alone is really where we, I think, discover what it is we’re looking for.

Silas Rose: 

Its an interesting reframe that starting with loneliness is the first step towards greater intimacy or connection. how can we actually use loneliness as the inspiration, if that’s what we’re kind of working with, to kind of open to a bigger form of love?

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

Yeah, so first of all, feeling the pain of our loneliness, right? And I think that it all begins with having some degree of compassion for ourselves, right? and feeling the pain instead of some kind of shame or some kind of blame or distraction. And so what do most of us do when we’re lonely? We distract ourselves. We pull out our phones or we watch a movie or look at YouTube videos or look for alternatives to the space of the loneliness itself. So I think, again, having some kind of self-compassion for that. And then also, the question you asked earlier, what is it that we’re looking for? So if we’re truly longing for connection with others, then it’s actually not that hard to find connection with others. It’s really a case of realigning our intention. And that the habit or the addiction to distraction is much greater than we realize. It’s a huge… problem i

Silas Rose: 

It’s not just intention it’s realigning our attention you know that we have to actually um you know be able to kind of recall some of attention from these other places to actually invest

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

yeah

Silas Rose: 

in being present with someone

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

To be present with someone yeah exactly and uh Yeah, so once our intention is to connect to another human being instead of to our fantasy of what our solution is. So yesterday I came across a woman who was just standing there wanting to talk, and I had headphones in because I was talking on the phone to another person, and I said to my friend, I’ve got to take the headphones off because this lady doesn’t know that I can’t hear her. And so I said goodbye to my friend. And then I ended up having about a half an hour conversation with this woman. And she was talking about her life in Yugoslavia before the war. It was an incredible connection. And it was very, I would say, very fulfilling. And it felt like a little snapshot of that woman and I both got something that we really needed. But had I left my headphones in, AirPods in, you know, she was talking not knowing that I was not hearing her. But making that choice, because to me it is a higher value, whoever the person is, to make a connection to the stranger or whoever. So that’s my personal way of trying to nourish myself through loneliness.

Silas Rose: 

It really feels like a form of public service, you know, when we can do that. And I think, for me at least, that’s aspirational that I feel kind of resourced enough in that kind of bigger sense of love that I can actually offer that out.

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

Yeah, so I think that’s a very practical thing that people can do is notice, number one, have compassion for the pain, but notice the obstacle of distraction. And then make the intention to see a human being in every person you meet, on the elevator, on the sidewalk, wherever. And not to exclude the animals and the birds, but if we’re busy fantasizing the love of our life, we’re missing out on our life.

Silas Rose: 

And the love that’s available right now.

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

Exactly. The flow. And that goes back to, to me, this flow of love and flow of kindness is the circulatory system of our human nature. It’s there moment by moment. It’s the guys with the jackhammer on the street that are busy digging it up, you know, but they’re part of it.

Silas Rose: 

Perhaps a good way to conclude this conversation is start talking about that highest yoga, which is the dance. or what rungpa Rinpoche calls the Lolita dance, or dancing with phenomena.

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

Well, I think that’s really what we’ve been talking about the whole time, is that dancing with phenomena in that sense means that there’s no separation, that there’s no self-consciousness, that there is this kind of affection for whatever is arising in the present moment like when you’re dancing and you suddenly think about it you lose your step right you know the the dance is about um unselfconsciously the body and the music and the energy of the room are all together so uh you know it’s even the word phenomena can be a bit too solid you know it’s it’s maybe going back to that flow of the flow of energy, which is, in some ways, I think the thing that we’re most afraid of is the bliss of love. You know, we think that it’s what we want, but when, you know, and the word bliss is used in the kind of higher tantras, I guess, and again, it can be just as simple as noticing with our eyes or smelling or hearing, and there are sense perceptions being completely awake to whatever the so-called object is, and there’s just this joy. For instance, a friend of mine gave me a beautiful orange rose the other day that had a fragrance that was phenomenal. Back to the word phenomena. And sometimes it’s just almost unbearable when something is that beautiful, you know?

Silas Rose: 

I think one of the reasons why love is so kind of intoxicating is because it gives us, at least for a moment, that experience of kind of expansiveness and freedom. And, it’s such a shock when it changes into something else, or when the contraction starts. How do you think you can kind of recognize or interrupt that contraction if you have the presence of mind to notice it?

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s such a good point and a good choice of words, you know, the contraction. Actually, when I was… When I was… an intern working on my master’s degree in Buddhist and Western psychology, I went back to Trungpa Rinpoche’s teachings on love and applied it to my work with domestic violence. And also from the point of view of just a traditional Western psychological model of how we develop, you know, how how we develop as a child from total dependence to kind of independence, but along the way run the risk of loss of the loved one, you know. And then the other extreme, the counterdependent extreme, where you’re so far away from the campfire that you get cold, you know. Like, what is that dance and that cycle of relationship? I wrote about it, actually, in my first book, The Five Keys to Mindful Communication. So, you know, again, experientially, I think it’s a subtle point, but the path of Buddhist meditation is a path of discovering that what we call ego is actually a clinch. It’s a clinch of body It’s a clench of the heart. It’s a clench of the mind. It’s a contraction. And that clench is triggered by fear. But the clench gives the illusion of separateness. And then that illusion of separateness, I think, triggers that early childhood abandonment. And then we kind of look out there for a solution. But In meditation, we learn how to recognize the way that that clench is triggered by certain thought patterns, and that all we have to do is come back to the present moment, to the body, to the breath, and open and discover that everything that that clench was telling us was an illusion. So You know, the way that the Buddha’s path is constructed is really brilliant because it kind of allows us to have that experiential return to that open space where everything is fluid. And you said earlier that, you know, the word tantra is like continuity. My preference would be almost like a fluidity. In other words, you know, there’s this continual flow of energy, but it’s not… It’s not like a thread in the sense that there’s a continual sense of self. It’s actually the relinquishing of sense of self into completely trusting the space of the present moment.

Silas Rose: 

Well, that’s a wonderful place to end this conversation season. So, thank you again so much.

Susan Gillis Chapman: 

Yeah, thanks again, Silas.

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