Attached to My Face

by Jill Satterfield

Even with over 20 years of meditation practice, I recently re-discovered just how attached I am to my face. Yes, the pun is that we are all attached to our faces—they are part of our heads. However, what the pun insinuates but doesn't explore is just how emotionally attached I am to my face. Some recent surgery showed me the hidden extent of it.

As I attempt to faithfully see everything as practice, being self reflective, looking over and over at my mind and its habits, I kind of got around seeing this particular fondness for my face as an attachment. I see an aging face for sure—which requires some getting used to—but it has been a surprise to discover what I thought was a simple, unassuming, and perfectly normal preference was underneath a definite attachment in disguise. 

This most recent crack in my human veneer came in the form of more surgery (I’ve lived through at least 21 so far), this time in my mouth, which left me at least (hopefully) temporarily, looking like someone else. When a friend suggested it was worse looking to me than anyone else, I laughed (carefully covering my mouth). When someone suggested no one would notice or care, I couldn't help but say that I didn't think they might not feel that way if it were their face! 

Almost everyone has a body part or physical area of their body that they like the best—hair, hands, legs—and mine was always my smile. I have one of those big, wide, bright smiles. The unsettling part of liking my teeth and smile is that I’ve long had a fear of falling and breaking my teeth. When I was young, a friend of mine fell while ice-skating and her tooth went through her lip and broke. The thought of that turned my stomach. When I learned to ski I was petrified of falling down the slope at high velocity and landing on my face breaking my teeth. So while I skied a little, I didn’t pursue it with any vigor.

About 10 years ago I had a root canal—this was after having only had a single cavity my whole life. A few weeks before I felt anything erupting, I had a prophetic dream  that my tooth was a green mushy aloe plant, which after the pain of the infection, made perfect sense as an image. It was shocking to have work done in my mouth, but at least my smile didn’t suffer. 

Fast-forward 12 years. I was in France when the root of the tooth on which I had the root canal snapped. I had taken a bite of celery and pop. A dentist pulled the tooth and put it temporarily back in with a short pin. I could barely breathe thinking it would come out. And, of course it did, after I moved to Paris. And, of course it had to be the one dinner and day of being a tourist with a friend visiting from New York.

I located a dentist who spoke decent English, and had a replacement tooth made. Suffice it to say that it was not comfortable or aesthetically pleasing, but, I rationalized, I was in Paris, didn’t know more than two or three people, so who would care? You know the reputation of the French and their teeth, and I was there to have the experience, and to write, so most of my time was spent writing alone, with a few hours each day going to museums or wandering solitarily around the city.

Even though no one else cared for a moment about my appearance, I continued to examine my feelings about it—what I was willing to expose, what I wanted to be private and secret—and I got to seeing just how attached I was/am to my face. I was living the example of avidya (delusion), thinking I was my face. I was a prime example of raga, having attachment to my looks, and also dvesa, having an aversion to how I looked. I was the walking textbook for what some of the Yoga Sutras cautioned against!

A couple of months later, I moved to London. There I found a cosmetic dentist who had the nicest office I had ever seen, with beautiful young women in white serving tea off of Haviland porcelain teacups with silver spoons on the side. He put an implant in my mouth and I was ecstatic when, after the swelling went down I looked like myself again, finally! I enjoyed London tremendously, especially feeling myself again and being able to speak the language. When it was time to go home, I returned to New York with renewed vigor and the excitement of being back.

Not more than a month later, the implant became infected and had to be extracted. I was devastated. I worked at being with what was—which was anger, sadness, and blame. Although I knew I had a choice as to how I was feeling, I was caught in a tangle and really having difficulty letting go. In Buddhism this is called upadana, which means clinging. I was indeed clinging to how I used to look.

With old age and sickness close on my coat tails, I realized that I had better relax about this a little. I knew that if I didn’t, I would be suffering non-stop from here on out. I really don't want to suffer any more than is absolutely necessary! There's what's called optional suffering in Buddhism, and I saw how I was adding to that pile.

I had a temporary tooth made; it not only looked temporary, but it sang of “being made.” I tried to hide it, and my smile got smaller. Even though I still used my smile, I rarely let the extent of my entire mouth widen in public, and only to a select few friends would I smile normally, or only when it was dark. 

I continued to travel and to teach about awareness, about suffering, about meeting what is, and I honestly kept living my messages to the best I was able. I knew in my heart that with time, I would accept what was going on physically more and more, and I did. Slowly.

I moved to California and began to settle in. I was ready to address the possible recovery of my smile with yet another dental surgeon. I developed faith in her, and the time had come to try again, repair the damage, and move on.

The surgery was five hours instead of the planned two, and afterward, I was ill, weakened, swollen, in pain. I hid in my home and read novels, many of them. I took pain meds, slept and barely ate, and didn’t leave my house. This went on for a month. The healing was so slow that my mouth wasn’t ready to accept a (new) temporary tooth—the proteins put into my jaw to re-build bone and the re-arranging of gum left my mouth and face incredibly swollen and painful. Now though, it was show time: I was to go on a retreat and I still had no (front) tooth. I weighed it out, I didn’t want to let anyone I didn’t know see the gap in my mouth, but I also didn’t want to miss the precious opportunity to be on silent retreat, which had always renewed me and has been a refuge.

I went to the retreat. I rarely opened my mouth. There were a couple of times we were asked to speak, and I either didn’t or put my hand over my mouth. During the meditation periods especially, I walked directly into my prideful fire. I was roasting in it; it was burning me and I only had tears to quench the heat. I faced my face and my pride over and over and over again. Sometimes with sorrow, other times with self -pity, and occasionally with anger. But I knew enough about practice to keep doing it no matter what. I didn’t run from my internal pain, even though I metaphorically ran from looking at anyone else to avoid being looked back at. I wanted to disappear physically, but to appear mentally and emotionally.

We all have our little pockets of shadow. Most everyone has a bit of something that hasn't been aired out, and spiritual practice is about finding those crevasses and filling them up with the light of awareness—no matter how slowly, or when, in your lifetime. Working with what is means just that, and life certainly does pitch some fastballs. Not all catches are graceful, but practice shows us that we have a choice about how we feel about things, and that we can pick up and try again.

I don't wish these kinds of lessons on anyone, but for me there have been gems in each one of these small traumas, and at this point I know no matter how difficult something might be, or how much I initially think I can't take it, I do and can, and will. The Yoga Sutras says:

“ II.33 Upon being harassed by negative thoughts, one should cultivate counteracting thoughts.” —translated by Edwin Bryant

(See Cultivating the Opposite for info on pratipaksha bhavanam or cultivating counteracting thoughts.)

And so I re-focus and re-adjust. I'm about to go out now, face forward, smiling inwardly. I've decided that although I still very much care about how I look, it won't prevent me from doing what I want and what is important. This has been about my face, but it is really about what has surfaced in front of my face and facing many unpleasant things. And I've been shown that there is a life that I still want to live in front of me. Optional suffering excluded.

Jill Satterfield is the founder of Vajra Yoga + Meditation, a synthesis of yoga and Buddhism that combines meditation, yoga and contemplative practices. Named “one of the 4 leading yoga and Buddhist teachers in the country” by Shambhala Sun Magazine, Jill has instigated mindful and creative educational programs for over 28 years.

She is also the founder and Director of the School for Compassionate Action: Meditation, Yoga and Educational Support for Communities in Need, a not-for-profit that trains teachers, psychologists and health care providers to integrate mind and body practices into their professions. SCA also provides classes to people in chronic pain, with illness, those suffering from PTSD, and at-risk youth. Jill teaches workshops internationally, is a faculty member of Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Mindfulness for Yoga Training and the Somatic Training in Marin, California, and is a guest teacher for many other training programs. To find out more about Jill, visit her website vajrayoga.com.

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Attachment (Raga), Depression, and Plan Z

by Nina

Plan E

Did you read my recent post about attachment Attachment (Raga) to Our Ideas About Ourselves? Because I’m starting to feel I’m going to be exploring this topic for some time. For one thing, just a couple of days someone close to me found out that he has heart disease, and I know this means he’s going to have to let go of some of his plans/dreams for his future. I don’t know how this is going to play out, but I know it will be painful for him because he was particularly “attached” to his vision of how he should live his life. Also, I know that Jill is going to write something very interesting about her attachment to her appearance. (Jill and I are having a very interesting time exploring the overlap between Buddhism and yoga philosophy.)

But for today I simply want to clarify something about my previous post, because a conversation on Facebook made me realize that something I said may have been misleading and I really want to be clear that I do not see meditation or a even well-rounded yoga practice as a cure for depression. I’ll begin with the Facebook comments from the reader, Lynn Somerstein, and me, and then I’ll comment further. (The really wonderful thing about this Facebook discussion was not only that it made me think, but I also ended up chatting with Lynn, who is a psychologist, a yoga teacher, and a writer, privately. So now we’re friends and may even work on some projects together in the future!)

Lynn: Although I read your blog regularly and gladly, I think today's post is a dangerous oversimplification of what depression is, does, and how it should be treated. People who are depressed often are unable to meditate-- instead they focus on all that they feel is wrong and they experience this as meditation, rather than a symptom of their illness. Depressed people need therapeutic help.

Nina: Sorry if you thought this was about depression. It is not. The person in question is getting professional help and medication. I always recommend that and consider yoga as a supplement only. However, I do think that part of recovering means being able to let go of certain things, and I know this from having gone through this myself (including therapy). I have written some about yoga for depression on the blog, which if you read those posts you will see that I never claim yoga can cure depression. –Nina

Lynn: Thanks Nina. Yoga and Psychotherapy together are a great help for depression and anxiety too. Thank you for answering my comment. I do read your every post. Namaste.

The post I was referring to about the limits of yoga for helping with depression was Yoga is a great thing, but..., in which I addressed the issue directly. The issue of problems that people with depression, anxiety, and other emotional or mental imbalances might have with so-called "relaxing" poses in When Relaxing Isn't Relaxing. Baxter also wrote a relevant post  Friday Q&A: Can Meditation Be Dangerous? about this.

After this discussion I contacted Lynn privately to ask if I could use her comments in a post and she agreed. After she agreed, I asked her if there was anything she wanted to add to her comments. By then, she had read my articles, and she sent me the following comment by email:

I agree, as you wrote in "Relaxing Isn't" that opening your eyes can help. For those who simply don't profit from meditation using a simple movement that can be connected with the breath, like walking or swimming, for example, may work better; as the body and breath unite, the mind quiets.

So, yes, just to be completely clear: I do not believe that meditation or yoga alone can cure depression, and anyone who is suffering from this illness should seek help from a professional. And thank you, Lynn, for helping me realize I needed to clarify this.

However, yoga can be a wonderful supplement in the recovery process, as the asana practice (like walking or swimming) can help get you out of your head and into your body, and sometimes certain asanas can energize or calm you (depending on which you need). See Tamasic and Rajasic Depression. Patricia Walden, a senior Iyengar yoga teacher, who herself suffers from depression, teaches workshops on yoga for depression, and you can find out more about her work in Yoga As Medicine by Timothy McCall (Patricia was Timothy’s first main teacher, and he did his teacher training with her). I have taken her workshop several times, and have been very inspired by her work. I still believe, however, that for some people, part of the process of recovering from depression (and maybe this is an essential part of therapy, but I can't speak to that) includes letting go of certain attachments, including the agenda you had for your life. And before you can move on to that step, you need to be ready to admit that attachment, as Patanjali says, IS an affliction.

2.3 avidya asmita raga dvesha abhinevesha klesah


The five afflictions (klesas) which disturb the equilibrium of consciousness are: ignorance or lack of wisdom, ego, pride of the ego or the sense of ‘I,’ attachment to pleasure, aversion to pain, fear of death and clinging to life. —Yoga Sutras, translation by Edwin Bryant 

To end on a lighter note, I’ll tell you a little story about letting go of plans that I’ll call “Plan Z.” On Sunday my companion and I went into New York City for lunch and a walk around Alphabet City (so many wonderful community gardens there!), and our plan was to take the PATH train home in the mid-afternoon and then do some work we needed to finish. Let’s call that Plan A. Well, it turned out the PATH was completely closed down due to a fire in the tunnel. So Plan B was splurge on a taxi (we weren’t going very far from home, and if there had been a way to walk across the Hudson river, we could just have walked). After a long time trying to flag one down and failing (Other people who couldn’t take the train? People leaving from the Climate March? Both?), we moved on to Plan C, which was calling Uber and/or a car service. Uber was surge pricing, which offended my companion, and we couldn't get through to the car service, so we came up with Plan D, which was to take a ferry to a certain city in New Jersey, and then walk home from there. Our backup plan for that was to go to Penn Station and take a train to Newark, but we knew by now that Penn Station was going to be super crowded. (My companion joked that Plan Z was that we would drink the entire bottle of artisan cucumber vodka we had purchased as a gift for someone and spend the night in Washington Square. Obviously, we weren’t going to do this, but it was a joke that we kept making that cheered us up, and also allowed us to discuss the whole concept of staying calm while letting go of plans in a light-hearted way—okay, maybe black humor—but we like that stuff.)

We decided to walk on the High Line (the beautiful elevated park) to make the most of our walk to the ferry, but we were rushing a bit because it was getting later and later, and the ferries stopped at seven. When we finally made it to the ferry terminal we found that the ferries to the city we wanted to go to didn’t run on weekends, so we made a snap decision to take the ferry to Hoboken instead, and figured from there we could either take the light rail train or walk. We called this Plan E. Plan F was if we couldn’t get on that ferry, we’d go to Penn Station. Long story short-ish, we got the second ferry to Hoboken (some other people had the same idea about how to escape from Manhattan) and then had nice dinner in an outdoor restaurant. Refreshed after our rest and meal, we were able to walk the rest of the way home. 

Obviously, this “escape from Manhattan” could have been very stressful (we had reasons why we needed to get back home that night) but our joking about all our plans and backup plans and how we had to keep letting go of them, helped us stay calm and even enjoy many aspects of our adventure. There were people playing bagpipes below the High Line at one point—why?

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Attachment (Raga) to Our Ideas About Ourselves

by Nina

Phil and Rita Stuck on Groundhog Day

2.3 avidya asmita raga dvesha abhinevesha klesah

The five afflictions (klesahs) which disturb the equilibrium of consciousness are: ignorance or lack of wisdom, ego, pride of the ego or the sense of ‘I,’ attachment to pleasure, aversion to pain, fear of death and clinging to life. —Yoga Sutras, translation by Edwin Bryant 

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time talking with a young person who is struggling with depression. Of all the things this person told me, one sentence keeps haunting me. In a voice choked with tears, the person said, “I thought I had my life all figured out—and I thought I knew who I was—but now all that is gone.” 

Some time ago I wrote a post The Pains Which Are to Come about the klesahs, the five afflictions that cause human suffering (interestingly, the word means “poison” in Sanskrit). In that post, I concentrated on aversion to pain and fear of death/clinging to life. Today, I thought I’d consider attachment (raga). Here's the yoga sutra that defines attachment:

2.7 Attachment stems from experience of happiness

Edwin Bryant explains this sutra as:

“Attachment is craving for pleasure by one who remembers past experience of pleasure. Ego is the root of attachment just as ignorance is the root of ego. Ignorance and ego cause the deluded mind to associate the self with the latent impressions of past experience of pleasure.” 

Often attachment is described—as it is above—as attachment to pleasure or to things that give us pleasure. Attachment to pleasure causes suffering because we crave more of the same, and we suffer when we can’t get more. Perhaps it was a material object that gave us pleasure, and we end up acquiring more and more of the same thing until we end up overspending or hoarding or perhaps we just can’t afford more and are tortured by cravings. Or perhaps it was a sensory experience that gave us pleasure, such as eating or having sex, both of which can lead to problems if you go overboard with them. Or, perhaps it was an emotional experience. Remember in the movie "Groundhog Day" (yes, that’s one of my all-time favorite movies), when Phil has his first wonderful evening with Rita, the woman he secretly loves, and then he desperately tries to repeat that same night over and over, always failing?

But it seems to me that, like the young man I described above, we can also have profound attachments to the lives we plan for ourselves or the images we have of who we are. That gives us a different kind of pleasure—a sense of security. And losing that can feel devastating. I’m pretty sure that we, as “aging” people, have either all gone through this ourselves or seen it happen to other people. Maybe a marriage we once thought would last forever ends in a divorce. Maybe years of striving for success in a certain job or profession ends in failure. Maybe someone close to you dies unexpectedly, your house burns down, or you develop a chronic illness, and that one event changes your entire life. Maybe you’ve always been the strong one, but now you need help for the first time. Of course, it is not always a negative experience that alters your ideas about your life and yourself—maybe you meet someone or make a discovery that puts you on an entirely unexpected path, and you wonder: how did I get here?

But as yoga sutra 2.3 says, it is “attachment” that causes the suffering, not the loss of pleasure. So it is only our clinging to the life we imagined we would live or the selves we thought we were that is the real cause of our suffering. Otherwise, we could just let go and move on. 

I actually find this observation about the nature of the human mind to be very helpful on its own. I try to bring awareness to my attachment to my fantasies about what my life should be or my beliefs about who I am. Right now I’m in New Jersey, where I didn’t expect to be this month, helping a family member. I’m not sure how long I’ll be here or what will happen next. And the yoga philosophy I described above—my understanding of my own attachment to what I expected my life to be—is helping me let go of the agenda I once had for this time period (not to mention the feeling—how on earth did I ever end up in New Jersey, where I never, ever wanted to live?). But obviously a young person who is feeling for the first time that his whole life—and self—is being destroyed has a much greater challenge. I see so clearly his desperate wish to return to the way things once were, and his stubborn clinging to his old self image, and I was once in the same position myself, many years ago.

So what does Patanjali have to say about all this? After describing the klesahs, including attachment (raga) in detail, Patanjali simply says the following: 

2.11. The states of mind produced by these klesahs are eliminated by meditation. 

However, it seems to me, before you can move on to that step, you need to be ready to admit that attachment IS an affliction. I sometimes think we cling to our attachments in a form of magical thinking, because we feel as if fervently wishing for what we desire will make some kind of magic that will allow us to return to living the life we always imagined or to the self we once believed we were. (Joan Didion’s book The Year of Magical Thinking described this kind of thinking that she experienced after the sudden death of her husband.) But despite the fact that the movie "Groundhog Day" was magical realism, it was only after Phil truly gave up on escaping the day he kept living over and over in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and somehow making Rita love him back—beginning to truly live his life in Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day—that he was able to wake up the next morning to a brand new day.

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