Charlotte Kasl, Ph.D. discusses If the Buddha Married: Creating Enduring Relationships on a Spiritual Path

Charlotte Kasl: This book is about creating a loving, trusting bond with a special partner, a bond based on a deep level of knowing, understanding and compassion that allows each person to move easily between separateness and oneness.

The key to relationships at both psychological and spiritual levels, is that we can be separate. If we can live out of the center of our own life, we can then let go of our ego boundaries and merge with someone else. To do this, we need to differentiate from our past, which means the voices of our parents, teachers, religious systems, spiritual systems, and etc. These are simply voices in our minds, and the mind is just the mind, it's not who we are. If we can achieve clarity about this, we will recognize our conditioning when it goes off. And by that, I mean those sudden bolts of anger or hurt or sadness that just seem to sweep over us sometimes. Probably ninety-nine percent of the time our big reactions have to do with the past, and are only a little bit about the present. And we cannot create connection when we are not in the present.

I interviewed a lot of fascinating couples for this book, and most of the happy couples described their relationships in simple terms. Some were high school sweethearts who were still married fifty years later, while others were on their second or third marriages, but were now, finally, getting it right. Some of the couples I interviewed spent most of their time together, others spent a great deal of their time apart -- it doesn't matter. The fundamentals are deeper than any of that.

My book explores ways to come alive and be authentic, as opposed to creating a patchwork quilt that holds the relationship together but obscures the possibility of true connection. It does not focus on superficial Band-Aids for relationships -- be nicer, more mysterious, give three hugs a day, be sure and do this, be sure and do that. These recipes for behavior often create a false persona. If you're "trying" to be nice you must not actually be feeling nice. And what I'm always more interested in is, what are you really feeling? What is your experience in the moment? Rather than what you're trying to be.

There's a fine line we walk between reflecting on ourselves, as opposed to paying attention to how we're behaving and then trying to be where we're not and trying to be someone we're not. For a genuine, intimate connection, we need to approach the protected ground of buried hurts and fears that inevitably appear when we open ourselves completely to another. People can be married for many years and still not be open to each other. They've slid into roles that stagger along to the point where the relationship deteriorates by tiny increments. But this alternative process invites us to go deep into ourselves, to be clear, and to sort out what part in any conflict is really about our own issues, instead of the relationship or the other person.

Things are always changing. Our bodies are changing as we're sitting here, our partner is changing, our perception of our partner is changing as we are changing . . . We always thinkthey've changed, but since nothing is permanent, often we have changed as well. In fact, it's tricky knowing if it's our perception of the other people that has changed, or the people themselves.

And every time we have a demand, however small, that someone be different than they are, we are getting caught up in attachment. It can be a little thing, like how they wear their hair, to how they talk, to how they smell, or have gained weight . . . all of these things. Attachment is about wanting things to be different than they are. Or you could call it resistance-that's the psychological term for it.

In his book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind Suzuki Roshi says that the Zen way of calligraphy is to write in the most straightforward, simple way as if you were a beginner. Not trying to make something skillful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention as if you were discovering what you were writing for the first time. Then your full nature will be in your writing. Likewise, in relationships, the Zen way is to be utterly straightforward, in a simple way, as if you were a beginner. And that means with a free mind you simply say, in a few words, "I want to, I don't want to, I like this, I don't like this, I'm not sure, maybe now, maybe later, I'm feeling this, or I'm feeling that." And all the while we're very attuned deep within us. We're not trying to make something skillful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention, as if we were discovering what we were writing for the first time. It's not about trying to make an image of a relationship, because in truth there is no image of a relationship that exists except for what you concoct in your mind.

"If we think our thoughts are who we are and identify self with thought or belief, then we will have trouble in our relationships." -- Charlotte Kasl

At the same time, this process asks us to look at each other and say, who are you this minute? Not who were you yesterday, but I want to know what you want, what you think, what you feel, where you're at, and I want to just hear it. I don't need to comment on it, fix it, change it or analyze it. I just want to be there. Buddhism reminds us that the expert has no room to learn, while a beginner's mind is free to know everything.

Having numerous rigid beliefs makes listening and learning frightening because we risk shattering these tightly held structures of the mind, which we think would compromise our idea of who we are. If we think our thoughts are who we are and identify self with thought or belief, then we will have trouble in our relationships. Our mind is full of all these boxes filled with thoughts like this: What right is, what wrong is, I'm bad, I'm damaged, I'll always be alone . . . The more these thoughts condense and become rigid and tight, anything that contradicts them creates chaos inside. In fact we have two choices: Either we let the conflicting idea in and let it shake us up, or we push it away. So, if we're not used to letting it in and letting it shatter our belief system, we live in fear of having our beliefs challenged. On the other hand, if we can loosen up, then we are free to really experience others. And if my ego is tied up in believing my thoughts are me, then I cannot make a body connection or a connection to spirit or, let's say, experience. I'm not experiencing what's going on around me, because I'm too busy defending my mind.

When something strikes an old reaction, the nervous system kicks in and says, I've got to defend myself. Or else you numb out. That's when we know we've gone into the past, because-the vast majority of the time-we are not, as adults, in imminent danger. We are being triggered by an old experience that now is wired into the nervous system. And that is some of the stuff that we dismantle, hopefully, to get down to that ability to be with who we are and who you are. In Buddhism there is an image of washing the mud off the mirror or the glass to see clearly, as opposed to seeing reality through all these filters.

A beginner's mind is the most conducive mind for healthy relationships because there's a lot of fluidity, and each partner is open to the other person changing, having opinions, or wanting to do different things. The relationship is not you or me, it's the space between us. It's something bigger than who we are separately.

A beginner's mind supersedes our immediate impulse to analyze, interpret, or judge our partner, at least most of the time. We listen with interest and respond with a nod of the head or an acknowledgment instead of rushing in with comments or advice based on old assumptions and beliefs. With an empty mind free of worry and fear, we experience a wellspring of freedom flowing through a relationship, rather than getting caught in ritualized ruts and predictable conversations. And, as we drop our resistance to the present and let ourselves experience our hurt, sadness, anger and joy and etc., the full range of emotions start rising up, through which we connect deeper to ourselves.

As soon as we have this free mind, we will be able to attune to ourselves and our lover. In fact, with a beginner's mind we become receptive with all of our senses - we take in body language, tone of voice, speed of movement, tightness of the body, or depth of breathing. And this gives us an internal sense of safety because we can clearly assess a situation and our reaction to it. Our body becomes the barometer of truth, safety, and so forth.

When we jump in to change the other person, we're almost always resisting our own feelings. Just ponder on that for a minute, because it happens so often. So, one phrase we would do well to drop in relation to others is, "Why don't you want to do that?" Your partner may come up with a reason, but in reality they probably just don't feel like it.

But in a relationship you want to let your partner know how you're feeling. It's important for both people to put their stuff on their table. We both have wants and desires and feelings, and we need to negotiate them and find connection points in order to discover what will work for both of us. The main thing is a deep level of truth when we listen inside and find what our opinions are. There may be a time when we don't care, and that's cool. But generally, we do have some opinion, so it's important to put it out there.

And then we have this chain of thoughts . . . if I tell you I haven't had an orgasm with you in 10 years, I'll upset you, you'll be mad, you'll feel bad about yourself, you'll have a tantrum, you'll leave. We go into this domino effect with our fears when we don't take care of the truth and our own center. Also, if someone says, "I don't want to do what you want to do," and a thought comes up inside, "That means you don't love me," that merely means we haven't differentiated. Someone is simply saying what he or she wants to do. It doesn't mean they don't love you; it doesn't mean anything. We hear a message the person's sending, then comes our interpretation or filter, and then we respond out of our filter. That's why it is important to inquire of ourselves, "What internal filter is going off now?"

As adults, no one can reject or abandon us. We can reject ourselves and we can abandon ourselves. But how can someone do it to us? A child can be abandoned. But as adults, people will either stay or they'll leave.

We are all a marvelous maze of different parts and levels of development. In fact I often ask my clients, "How old do you feel right now? Does this feel like an old feeling?" Sometimes, we feel centered and grown-up; other times, we feel immature and confused. It's particularly useful when we have a sudden shift in mood or feel an intense surge of fear, hurt, anger or sadness. By asking how old we're feeling, we bring a witness or observer on board and gain an important sense of perspective.

When we're in the present there is generally nothing much to fear. If we're just inquiring into what's true, which is what a relationship is about, it's an inquiry of going into a deeper level of knowing each other.

Some forms of Buddhism talk about softening our desires and pushing them aside. But in terms of sexuality, I interpret this as having sexuality without attachments. In other words, attachment that sex has to be a certain way, for example, that we have an orgasm, that our partner kisses a certain way, that anything particular happens. Rather, this process encourages us to surrender to the power of a physical relationship because it can bring us intensely into an experience of unity with all things through the unity with this one person. When two people in a caring relationship allow the full power of their sexuality to unfold together, it can be an intensely intimate and intertwined part of the spiritual path. By opening ourselves fully to each other, we also open ourselves to the wonder of all creation. But to be in this kind of open space, we have to say, "I am willing to feel whatever is going on inside of me. I'm willing to know whatever I have disowned, whatever secrets I've hidden."

In fact, the more deeply we attune, the less we are able to use sex in a disassociative way. When we make love with a beginner's mind, we let our love spill out of us as our intuitive, creative side awakens. With a beginner's mind, we make love to our beloved for the first time because there is no past, no future and no expectations. We are here with our lover to know each other, to feel the pleasure and wonder of these amazing bodies, and to feel the unity of our connection. Imagine making love with a completely empty mind, and no memory of the past, only a ripe feeling of love for your partner. Let your loving become a flow of giving and receiving that brings you unity and joy.

Also, our relationships are embedded in community. The world lives in us and we live in the world. It's a wheel within a wheel, an endless cycle of ever-changing connections. Our home base of a loving relationship helps us to reach out to others, to radiate healing energy to our friends and loved ones. Ultimately, love is not something we seek; rather, it lives in us and between us and around us. Manifest in the world, we become part of something vast and intangible as we come into a felt relationship with everyone. As we tap deeper and deeper into that wellspring of love that rests at the center of all of us, we become the message as well as the messenger.