Chinese Finger Trap

When I was a little girl my older brother had a trick he liked to play on me. He’d put both my index fingers into a tight straw container called a Chinese finger trap and tell me to pull them out. The initial reaction to the finger trap is to panic and yank your fingers outward, which makes the trap tighter. The way to escape the trap is to relax and push the ends toward the middle, which enlarges the opening and frees the fingers. The harder I pulled the tighter the straw trap bound my hands together. The only way to get the thing off me was to relax and gently let it slip off, no mean feat, especially given the element of panic. It’s a cruel trick, but it did teach me something I keep learning over and over again in different forms. The harder I struggle the greater my suffering. The antidote is relaxing when I most want to tense up.

We each have our own version of the Chinese finger trap, things we’d like to avoid that keep turning up in our lives, addictions we are desperate to release, memories and habits that cling to us no matter how hard we struggle. The Western way is to “fight” the thoughts and urges but, as we all know, fighting urges is not the best strategy. Not only does it patently not work, it makes the thoughts and urges stronger. Fighting with our own mind leaves us exhausted and feeling like a failure. The Buddha offered a different strategy. Turn toward the urge, listen with respect to what it has to say then choose your actions based on clear seeing. Making the space for all thoughts and feelings-- dark, loving, angry, jealousy, needy and all others, is not amoral. Quite the contrary. By listening to our impulses unconditionally we remain aware of the dark and light within us rather than projecting them onto other people.

In meditation we offer all our thoughts, feelings and sensations an unconditional space in which to arise and dissipate. In that safe, quiet, private space of meditation where anything goes, there are no boundaries. We taste freedom that is as vast as the Universe, where all things, bar none, are welcome. There is nowhere in public like this. In public we have learned that certain thoughts are good and others bad. In the Universe of meditation no such distinctions are made. This is the magic shift in perspective that allows us to relax when we are prone to tense up. We just stop believing our own thoughts, which deprives them of fuel. It’s simple. The hard part is believing that something this simple can completely change our outlook and set us free from the Chinese finger trap we find ourselves in.

One other thing about the Chinese finger trap my brother tortured me with. Even the painful events in life, quite possibly especially the painful events, are inlaid with jewels. The finger trap taught me, in a visceral, direct way, that struggling only makes things worse. And now, I pull that jewel my brother bestowed upon me out from its velvet purse and offer it to you. Try it, see if it works. Let me know what you discover.