Look at your poop (look with two eyes)

 Look at your poop. This is meant to be humorous and serious advice to people exploring Buddhism.

Why look at your poop? Well, first, what do you see when you look at your poop?

• Are you disgusted?
• Are you amazed at how different it is day by day?
• Do you see chunks of corn?
• Do you have an urge to wash your hands? (or wash your eyes?!?!! LOL)

Those are some common responses, valid responses. It is a pretty ordinary way of looking at poop. Look at it like you'd look at dog poop on the street. Kinda gross. Kinda peculiar.

But the poop is also you.

Quite literally, the poop was what was in you but for a few minutes ago.

And, if you look at other people (or yourself in a mirror), you can use the perception that they are full of poop too.

I'm not trying to ruin your day with an unpleasant image. But I'm pointing out how selectively we see things. We like to see poop as outside. As something that we create and expel, expertly sectioned off by the intestines. It is waste. It is not really a big part of me.

Here are some other ways to look at poop.

• Everything you eat, becomes poop.
• Even when you eat the most delicious thing, it will become poop in short time. Can you see this while you are eating?
• We are poop machines. If we stop pooping, we effectively die. (Not strictly medically true, because we can be sustained with an IV, for example.) So, our existence is enabled and interweaved with pooping.
• Everyone is the same as you, with some variation, in that they poop regularly, usually daily.
• That person you may lust after in the magazine ad or at the coffee shop. They are filled with poop.
• Can you see the inputs of food (labor, sunlight, water, etc) in your poop?

The lesson here is that we can choose and use our perceptions.

Perception 1: Poop is waste that I efficiently process and expel. After I poop, it goes away. Out of sight, out of mind. Continue with my day.

Perception 2: Poop is waste that I efficiently process and expel. It has unpleasant smell and can carry diseases. Can I use this foulness to help my Buddhist practice?

Yes. We can use that foulness to help us retrain our mind and our awareness, in line with Buddhism. 

If we think our bodies are awesome things, we will attach and cling, joining our mind to our body with negative results. If, instead, we can think of our bodies as foul, even for a moment, we can create some separation between our mind and body. And that generates a separated awareness. So, disgust, dispassion, and disenchantment are tools to be used in the path.

It's not all about delighting in satisfying things and avoiding unsatisfying things. Buddhism has been co-opted to some extent as a life-affirming and life-coaching sort of pseudo-religion: what I call pop-Buddhism. Pop-buddhism has it's use, as the way people get started. But it's important to understand that being happier in life and in the world is not the goal of Buddhism. Similarly, generosity and kindness are important parts of the path. But it's not the whole path.

There is a concept called samvega, which roughly translated is a disenchantment or weariness/disgust with the world. The 4 dhamma summaries point out that the world is insufficient, and we don't progress on the eightfold path by getting more entangled with the world. We actually need to get away, get secluded.

Samvega is linked to an idea called samsara, which is the endless cycling of birth and death and rebirth, which has pleasant and unpleasant parts, but is ultimately full of suffering. We practice Buddhism to understand suffering, to be able to identify and abandon the causes of stress. The causes of stress are abundant in the world and self-perpetuating, if we get involved. And we are born/built to get involved. Everytime we want more of something or less of something, that's the involvement. Thats the cause of stress. That's part of samsara.

So, poop helps me see that. That delicious and expensive meal yesterday. Today's poop.

And this body I glorify and attach to... also made up of the byproducts of poop, a process of turning dead plants and animals into useful cells and chemicals and poop.

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Thich Nhat Hanh has an inspiring mediation on eating an orange. Link1, Link2. It's linked to the idea of interdependence. This is a perspective that we can tune our minds to. We look at the orange. We taste it with all 5 senses. We look deeply at the orange and we see the whole path of getting here. We see the tree. We see the roots. We see the water. We see the soil. We see the thousands of years that created the soil. We see the sun. We see the workers who harvest the orange. We see the truck drivers who drive it here. We see their parents.

It's a pretty inspiring vision. And, I've met many Buddhists who use ideas of interconnectedness to get out of their narrow mindset and feel "one" with the world. This is a very useful tool, especially for people who feel caught in their own mind, often who are busy or have stressful jobs or family life. "I am part of this big crazy world!" They might exclaim that.

One can link oneself to interconnectedness and have a very good and happy life. It can be an inspiration for generosity, for caring for the planet and others. There are lots of good things to be said for interconnectedness. In fact, if one wants to be a bodhisattva, interconnectedness may be the key ingredient. But, interconnectedness is not the end of suffering. Even if used very skillfully. And, if not used very skillfully, it creates attachments and even more suffering.

In the Thai forest tradition, they say we need to look with two eyes. We are habituated to look with just one eye, to see the allure in things we want, often the things that give us immediate short-term pleasure. A simple example is that the bag of potato chips has the allure of the salty deliciousness. But one has to also look at the bloatedness, indigestion, and generally negative health consequences that also result. Seeing the allure and the drawbacks is seeing with two eyes.

Which gets us back to poop. The Thich Nhat Hanh meditation on oranges / tangerines, when used inspiringly, has people focus just on the positive affect elements of the interconnected causal chain. That is, we focus on the things we like. This is a "children's book" version, trying to be agreeable so people will like it. But the two-eyes version would see the other parts. We'd see the land clearing. We'd see the truck driver emissions. We'd see the droughts. And we'd see the poop that results about 24 hours after we eat that orange.

If we stick with the children's book version, seeing all the beautiful things of interconnectedness, we get enamored of the world. We want more of what we like. So we look for more and more positive examples of interconnectedness. How our money supports small businesses. And how our yoga teacher volunteers at the local school. And how people help each other everyday.

These are all true, but this is seeing with just one eye, and it is a bit of a trap.

If we see with two eyes, we can see that interconnectedness is filled with interactions in the world and in people's minds. And that these interactions are positive and negative. And, in large part, they are unreliable at best and chaotic at worst. The world is not a refuge for us. And interconnectedness is not the complete answer. (related video/audio link)

The Buddha exalted generosity. But the society of monks were not aimed at maximum generosity. They were aimed at the end of suffering.

Similarly, interconnectedness can be exalted. But maximum interconnectedness is not the goal. And it does not lead to the end of suffering.

So, like many things in Buddhism, interconnectedness is a useful tool. By all means, use it if it helps decrease greed, anger, and delusion.  It depends on what you would do instead. If you'd chase money, sex, or fame instead, then interconnectedness can move in the right direction. But just make sure you don't chase interconnectedness to excess, to the extent that it leads to more greed, anger, and delusion.

UUDR