Unexpected Freedom

What is Renunciation?visit to the monastery. It wasn’t difficult to come up with ajustification for saying ‘yes’ to the programme producer, yetmy gut feeling was to mistrust their motivation, and todoubt whether they would be sensitive enough to avoiddistracting the children from the purpose of their visit. So Isaid ‘no’. They called back many times in an attempt to getme to change my mind but to my surprise I found it quiteeasy to remain with my original answer. I confess I wassomewhat worried that the school might have beendisappointed but still it felt true to say ‘no’. As things turnedout the head teacher got in touch to say how delighted theschool staff were because they hadn’t wanted the televisioncrew along on the trip either but nobody had ever said ‘no’to them before.Strategic FrustrationIf we feel unable in this area we can easily be distracted,inwardly and outwardly. It is my observation that this notonly makes us excessively vulnerable but leads to dullness. Ifwe let ourselves get what we want all the time, we go flat,we lose the edge. In our present day culture of affluence andcomfort we are often disinclined to consider this dynamic.The reality is that I like to get what I want and yet there is apart of me that knows that complying with this arrangementfails to give me the deeper contentment for which I long.I refer to this area of our practice as ‘strategic frustration’– we set out to engage frustration in a constructive way. TheRinzai school of Zen Buddhism has formalised frustrationinto a meditation technique called koan practice. The meditatoris instructed to ponder on an ultimately frustratingpredicament or is given an apparently impossible questionthat is specifically designed to ‘undo’ the thinking mind. In125