A metaphor I frequently use when talking about the transformative power of the Dharma—and the problems it can gradually lead us away from—is that of knots, whether in our perception, in our emotional habits, or in our very body. The latter is, perhaps, where this image first became a lived reality for me. Noticing the areas of muscle tension in my abdominal area, which is where I experience most of my worry and anxiety, made me consider other potential types of knots I might carry in my system, creating unnecessary suffering for myself.
I wouldn’t say that I choose to have these knots, either physical or mental, as if in an act of (imaginary) free will. It’s never the case that I step back from my lived reality, take an honest look at it, and then say, “Today might be a good day to have some entanglements in my mind and body! Let’s suffer!”
These knots come from conditioning, some of which, according to the Buddhist view, weirdly predates time and has no particular temporal beginning. An example of that would be our primordial belief in an independent self—the belief which lies at the root of all mental anguish. To quote one of my teachers, venerable Robina Courtin, it’s as if we were children drawing the image of a tiger and then becoming scared of it. We tie the knot of believing in a fixed, poor-quality self, and it then suffocates us.
This knot of self-grapsing—part of the basic mechanisms that condition me to suffer—would take a lot of time and effort to undo. Even when we can see the glimpses of reality behind and beyond it, it does not dissolve into complete openness overnight, and, for most of us, even in one lifetime. However, there’s still a promise of freedom, both in the long run and in each moment of connecting with the ultimate reality. I am very fond of a quote from the Secret Essence Tantra (in this case paraphrased by Lama Dechen Yeshe Wangmo):
Nowhere is there anything that can bind you.
Nowhere is there a self that can be bound.
So why insist on tying knots in space?
Other types of knots definitely have a temporal dimension. They are what I would associate with my gradual traumatisation in this life, in which painful events—or, rather, my response to them—keep tying up the threads of my emotional energy, making me more and more reactive and insecure. These knots gradually grow in number, hidden in my body-mind complex, all buzzing with the energy trapped in them. With that, my body, speech, and mind turn into what Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche calls pain body, pain speech, and pain mind: the same “three doors of action”, now filtering my energy so that it becomes something neurotic.
In one way, no difficult situation would just correspond to one knot—each stream of pain is a continuation of something in the past, a ripening of a previous seed, yet another note in the same discordant song. However, from another point of view, each situation, each temporally-located knot is worth attending to—with tender attention and healing methods that would lead us back to a state of greater openness.
Since our body, speech, and mind are indeed doors, internal knotting gets projected outside. When enough privileged people participate in its deluded dance, systems of oppression arise. Those, in turn, further hurt and further traumatise, keep beings away from access to multiple types of resources—and, above all, stealing the foundational right to exist and to feel like we deserve to exist. (In a step towards decentering humans we can notice how much other species are denied that right by the horrifying machine of colonial, capitalist, patriarchal, anthropocentric abuse).
What a joke: our attempts at finding happiness, so deeply misguided by the pull of energy that tries to contract around a sense of “me” (and around my privilege), hurt both ourselves and others. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo notes:
It’s as if we are all tied up in knots, pulling in all directions trying to untangle ourselves. But because we don’t know how to disentangle ourselves, we just pull blindly at the knots and make them tighter.
What would the process of untying look like? Numerous valid descriptions might exist. A lay Buddhist yogini I deeply revere, Dipa Ma, once said that we remove all the quintessential knots (or fetters) by skilfully applying our awareness in each moment, cultivating the experience of insight. In a somewhat different wording, Tibetan masters of Tara practice (another passion of mine) explain that we undo these knots by reconnecting with the qualities of innermost reality—the reality that, for practitioners, can manifest as Tara in her multiple forms.
The common theme for most of these presentations would be that of reconnecting with interdependence. This is where the process of knotting up (and thus contracting and tightening) gives way to the process of interweaving (or interbraiding). The threads that make up my being and lead to my happiness won’t get ruined by being harmoniously interwoven with the life-threads of others—of course, as long as we try to keep ourselves relatively free of inner harmful knots (essentially, working on not being toxic to each other). In a harmonious form of interbeing, there would be an enhancement of creativity, wisdom, and joy: individual voices merge into a powerful choir.
Furthermore, the more I see how each of my own life-threads can fundamentally be seen as an immaterial ray in luminous emptiness, the less likely I am to be deluded about the nature of our interbraided live: interconnectedness ceases to feel like a prison and becomes the joyful reality to attend to. Greater freedom of perception leads me to a more ethical, non-violent way of life.
I find it fascinating that even in the modern Catholic tradition, so complex and multi-layered, the form of Virgin Mary that seems to be receiving more and more attention is that of Our Lady Untying Knots (highly revered, it seems, by the current Pope). Without going into an elaborate discussion of parallels and differences (and there are certainly many), I can only pray that the knots around our hearts get undone, and that our understanding of interdependence—consciously cultivated through practice and also naturally emerging from within—may support greater levels of freedom and joy for all beings.
And, of course, peace.
“We have to be able to relax the psychic and spiritual cramp which knots us in the painful, vulnerable, helpless “I” that is all we know as ourselves.”
—Thomas Merton, Conjenctures of a Guilty Bystander