What do we call this decade that is about to leave us? The 2010s? The 10s? The tense?
I call it the decade when I shed tears in a classroom.
It was 2013 and nothing was really solid. I just finished my MA Art Studies and decided to take an MFA (when a lot of people have scoffed at this and derided me for not taking the PhD right there and then). I was not employed by UP Fine Arts and was on the verge on returning to the cubicled existence of corporate life.
I was enrolled at UP Diliman Chancellor Michael Tan’s Anthropology course. In one class, he was discussing rituals regarding connections and self-realization. He mentioned that this is not a new-fangled thing from the West like what we see in many Self-Help sections in bookstores. He said that the “self” has different iterations in many cultures.
He then mentioned a certain Tibetan ritual of “feeding the demon.” Dr. Tan said that it was a different form of “exorcism;” whereas the usual form of exorcism was to expunge the demon from your body in a violent manner. But the demon here is not merely a supernatural entity in possession of your body but the demon here is something more intricate (like a part of you), insidious like insecurity, hatred, fear of failure, resentment, anger, anxiety, self-loathing, self-pity, etc. The demon here is obsession which is ego-clinging. The demon manifests because of us. It will not exist without us thinking it into existence. The demon is an idea of our shortcomings and of our desires and, with it, the frustrations of not attaining those desires.
One way to deal with this demon is to feed it; which may sound counterintuitive as we may have been culturally programmed to expel the demon. Dr. Tan mentioned it was an intricate Buddhist ritual involving being solitary in a quiet room and three chairs. One chair is for you, the other chair is for the demon, the other chair is for the “ally.” Please note that I type this from my memory and I may have forgotten some details about the ritual itself which was just discussed quickly but that class has a lingering effect on me.
Dr. Tan said that you sit on one chair and the two empty chairs facing you. On one empty chair you imagine your demon….what does your resentment look like? Why does it look like that? What does it want from you? And this is the surprising bit, you stand up and sit on the chair where your demon sits and then you become the demon and you look at the chair where you originally sat. Now, with the demon’s eyes, look at yourself and ask yourself why this demon has so much power over you. You begin to understand your demon and its hungers. What would trigger the hunger of the demon when it sees you? You ask your demon what would it need. If you know its needs, you know what to feed it. If your demon is stress, then maybe it needs to feed on relaxation. If your demon is an ex, then maybe you need to think of happier times when you were really in love with your ex so as not to really make that ex an overwhelming persistent memory of hate. If your demon is your father dying, then maybe you feed it with the acceptance of things beyond your control.
Remember, we create our own demons, ergo we should know what makes them hungry.
You go back to where you originally sat and then imagine a glass or a plate then you feed the demon. You feed the demon with your answers to the questions of what makes them hungry and how will they feel satiated. (On a side note, this is Buddhism; remember the main tenet of this religion is that desire is the obstacle to our salvation which is breaking free of the cycle of reincarnation into lives of pain and want. That breaking away is called “Nirvana.” The triumph over desire is to be satisfied (Visual Cue: take a look on how the Buddhas are portrayed in Sukhothai Art: the Buddha has lowered eyelids and has a slight smile….many art historians cite this is the “look” of satisfaction exemplified by the Buddha who ultimately won over base desires.)
Once the demon is full it will either disappear or change into an ally and take its seat on the third chair in which you and the ally look at each other and discuss what needs to be done. This way, you wrest your own demons by admitting they exist and asking them what they want. In a way, these are no longer your demons but a needy version of yourself. That part hit me.
Anger is not my fuel. Anger is not my companion. I learned that anger is a process that can resituate itself from a massive landslide…if you let it…or you can feed your anger with generous heaps of gratitude when you learn to see and realize that this anger is a lesson that was ignored.
At that point of realization in that class discussion, I surprised myself by have tears streak down my face. I could not remember when was the last time I cried in class. Was it in Kinder 1 in St. Benedict’s Learning Center when I could not tie my shoelaces? That situation is galaxies apart from the reason I shed tears in that classroom in my mid 30s.
Imagine my horror because I was crying. And if you know me, I usually sit at the front and center and there I was with my tear-streaked face. I looked out of the window of that Palma Hall classroom trying to ignore Dr. Tan’s probing glances. I remember it was night-time but I could see hints of greenery outside. I was breathing heavily so as to control my breaths to prevent me from having a full-on meltdown.
I am not Buddha. I will never conquer desires. My demons will never go away. I have learned to deal with that. This was the moment in the decade when I learned to befriend my demons and take them with me as reminders of what needs to be done. The demons tell me that they are hungry because my ego and myopic selfishness make them hungry. If I ignore my demons, they will win.
This is the decade where I learn the quiet power of a confrontation; not based on aggression, but based on determination to see what enables the demons to come out and play and overwhelm me…overwhelm us.
So, that was my decade…wherein I learn to stop, feed, learn from my demons and walk with my demons and see how far this will take me.