How "Rain" Can Nourish You

Mindfulness does not reject experience. It allows experience to be the teacher. With mindfulness, we can enter into the difficulties of our lives to find healing and freedom.

In retreats in the West, there are four principles for transformation through mindfulness that are taught under the acronym RAIN ("rain" in English). The term, coined by Michele McDonald, stands for Recognition, Acceptance, Investigation, and Non-identification. This acronym echoes Zen poets who tell us that "rain falls equally on all things". Just as the nourishment given by external rain, the internal principles of the RAIN practice can transform our difficulties.

Recognition

Recognition is the first step of mindfulness. When we are stuck in our lives, we must begin with a willingness to see what is happening. It is as if someone asked us gently, "what is happening in this moment?" Do we quickly answer "nothing", or do we stop and recognize the reality of our experience, here and now?

With recognition, we step out of denial. Denial undermines our freedom. The diabetic who denies his body is not free. Neither is the stressed executive who denies the cost of her lifestyle, or the self-critical aspiring painter who denies his love for art. The society that denies its poverty and injustice has also lost part of its freedom. If we deny our dissatisfactions, our anger, our pain, our ambition, we will suffer. If we deny our values, our beliefs, our longings, or our kindness, we will suffer.

“The arising and flourishing of understanding, love, and intelligence has nothing to do with any external tradition”, observes Zen teacher Toni Packer. “It happens completely on its own when a human being questions, imagines, listens, and looks without being caught in fear. When self-interest is quiet, suspended, the sky and earth are open.”

With recognition, our attention becomes like a respectful host. We name and, internally, bow to our experience. “Yes, sadness. And now, excitement. Yes, conflict. Tension. Oh, now pain. And now, the judging mind”. Recognition moves us from delusion and ignorance toward freedom. “We can light a lamp in the darkness”, says the Buddha. We can see what this is about.

Acceptance

The next step of the RAIN practice is acceptance. Acceptance allows us to relax and open to the facts before us. It is necessary because, with recognition, a subtle aversion may arise, a resistance, a wish that it were not so. Acceptance does not mean we cannot work to improve things. But for now, this is how it is. In Zen it is said that, “If you understand, things are exactly as they are. And if you do not understand, things are still as they are.”

Acceptance is not passivity. It is a courageous step in the process of transformation. “Problem? Life is a problem. Only death is good”, declares the Greek Zorba. “Living is rolling up your sleeves and embracing problems”. Acceptance is a voluntary movement of the heart to include whatever stands before it. In individual transformation, we must begin with the reality of our own suffering. For social transformation, we must begin with the reality of collective suffering, injustice, racism, greed, and hatred. We can only transform the world as we learn to transform ourselves. As Carl Jung remarks: “Perhaps I myself am the enemy who must be loved.”

With acceptance and respect, problems that seem intractable often become workable. A man began giving large doses of cod liver oil to his Doberman because he was told it was good for dogs. Every day he would hold the dog's head between his knees, the dog protesting, force its mouth open, and pour the liquid down its throat. One day, the dog broke free and spilled the fish oil on the floor. Then, to the man's great surprise, the dog came back to lick the puddle. That was when the man discovered that the dog was not fighting the oil, but fighting his lack of respect in administering it. With acceptance and respect, surprising transformations can occur.

Investigation

Recognition and acceptance lead to the third step of the RAIN practice, investigation. Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh calls this "looking deeply". In recognition and acceptance, we recognize our dilemma and accept the truth of the whole situation. Now we need to investigate in a more complete way. Buddhism teaches that whenever we are stuck, it is because we have not examined the nature of the experience deeply enough.

Buddhism systematically directs our investigation toward four areas that are critical for understanding and freedom. They are called the four foundations of mindfulness: body, feelings, mind, and dharma, the underlying principles of experience.

Here is how we can apply them when we are working with some complicated experience. Beginning with investigation in the body, we consciously locate where our difficulties are held. Sometimes we find heat, contraction, hardness, or vibration. Sometimes we notice throbbing, numbness, a certain shape or color. We can investigate whether we are meeting this area with resistance or with mindfulness. We notice what happens when we hold these sensations with mindfulness. We observe what happens as we hold these sensations with mindfulness. Do they open? Are there other layers? Is there a center? Do they intensify, move, expand, change, repeat, dissolve, or transform?

In the second foundation of mindfulness, we can investigate what feelings are part of this difficulty. The primary tone of feeling: is it pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral? Are we meeting this feeling with mindfulness? And what are the secondary feelings associated with it? Often we discover a constellation of feelings. A man who remembers his divorce may feel sadness, anger, envy, loss, fear, and loneliness. A woman who was unable to help her addicted nephew may feel longing, aversion, guilt, desire, emptiness, and unworthiness. With mindfulness, each feeling is recognized and accepted. We investigate what it is like to feel each emotion, whether pleasant or painful, contracted or relaxed, tense or sad. We notice where we feel the emotion in our body and what happens to it when we hold it with mindfulness.

Begin Now

Next comes the mind. What thoughts and images are associated with this difficulty? What stories, judgments, and beliefs are we holding? When we look more closely, we usually discover that some of them are one-sided, fixed viewpoints or outdated habitual perspectives. We see that they are just stories. They lose their power over us. We cling to them less.

The fourth foundation to be investigated is called "mindfulness of dharma". Dharma is an important and multifaceted word that can mean the teachings and the path of Buddhism. It can mean truth, and in this case it can also mean the elements and patterns that generate experience. In mindfulness of dharma, we investigate the principles and laws that are operating. We can notice whether an experience is really as solid as it appears. Is it unchanging or is it impermanent, moving, changing, recreating itself? We notice whether the difficulty expands or contracts the space in our mind, whether it is under our control or has a life of its own. We notice whether it is self-constructed. We investigate whether we are clinging to it, resisting it, or letting it be. We see whether our relationship with it is a source of suffering or of joy. And finally, we notice how much we identify with it. This brings us to the last step of the RAIN practice, non-identification.

Non-identification

In non-identification, we stop taking the experience as being "me" or mine. We see how identification creates dependency, anxiety, and inauthenticity. By practicing non-identification, we question each state, experience, and story: "is this really what we are?" We see the seduction of that identity. Instead of identifying with this difficulty, we let go and rest in self-awareness. This is the culmination of releasing the difficulty through the RAIN practice.

A Buddhist practitioner, David, identified himself as a failure. His life had gone through several disappointments, and after some years of Buddhist practice, he also became disappointed with his meditation. He had become calmer, but that was all. He was still tormented by critical thoughts and relentless self-judgment, remnants of a harsh and painful past. He identified with these thoughts and with his story of hurt. Even the practice of compassion for himself brought him little relief.

Then, during a ten-day mindfulness retreat, he was inspired by teachings on non-identification. He was moved by stories of those who faced their demons and freed themselves. He remembered the account of the Buddha, who on the night of his enlightenment faced his own demons in the form of the armies and temptations of Mara. David decided to stay awake all night and face his own demons directly. For many hours, he tried to remain attentive to his breath and his body. Between sessions of sitting practice, he took periods of walking meditation. In each session, he was washed over by waves of drowsiness, body aches, and critical thoughts. Then he began to notice that each changing experience was attended by one common element: consciousness itself.

In the middle of the night, he had a "eureka" moment. He realized that consciousness was unaffected by any of these experiences, that it was open and untouched like space itself. All his struggles, the painful feelings and thoughts, came and went without the slightest disturbance to consciousness itself. Consciousness became his refuge.

David decided to test his realization. The meditation hall was empty, so he decided to roll on the floor. Consciousness simply noticed. He stood up, shouted, laughed, made funny sounds, imitating animals. Consciousness simply noticed. He ran through the hall, lay down silently, went outside to the edge of the forest, picked up a stone and threw it, jumped back and forth, laughed, came back and sat down. Consciousness simply noticed it all. Upon discovering this, he felt free. He watched the sun rising gently over the hills. Then he went to sleep for a while. And when he woke, his day was filled with joy. Even when his doubts returned, consciousness simply recognized them. Like "rain", his consciousness allowed all things equally.

It would be very encouraging to end this story here. Later in the retreat, David again fell into periods of doubt, self-judgment, and depression. But this time, even in the midst of it, he could recognize that it was just doubt, just judgment, just depression. He could no longer accept it entirely as his identity. Consciousness noticed that too. And it was silent, free.

Buddhism says that non-identification is the abode of awakening, the end of clinging, true peace, nirvana. Without identification, we can live with care, but no longer trapped in the fears and illusions of the small sense of self. We see the secret beauty behind everything we encounter. Mindfulness and fearless presence bring true protection. When we meet the world with recognition, acceptance, investigation, and non-identification, we discover that wherever we are, freedom is possible, just as rain falls and nourishes all things equally.

Originally published at lionsroar.com