Some 18 years ago I had an altercation with a Dzogchen Buddhist who recommended a technique of meditation that basically went this way: you inhale impurity, and exhale purity. You inhale anger and exhale bliss. Eat bitter, taste sweet, essentially.

My objection was that what you “inhale”, basically your spiritual input, will determine the content of your consciousness, and expecting to transform it within the span of one breath is incredibly naive; you will fail, and instead of transforming discord into harmony you will accumulate discord and disturbance within you, and you will exhale hypocrisy, the pretense of peace and harmony.

However, I recently witnessed disturbing trends within society, as well as some individual examples, that made me reconsider my position.

What I realized is that I might be defining the problem from one position, that might not be the only possible and valid one, due to certain unsaid implications. For instance, if one implies a steady spiritual foundation of one’s consciousness, basically what I would call a vertical connection, and if one learns how to maintain this amidst all kinds of superficial experiences and mental states, this would invalidate my objection. “Inhaling” would then not refer to appropriating a spiritual state, but to suffering an experience with one’s deeper spiritual state unperturbed, and, furthermore, it would imply suffering a blow without automatically generating a reaction of the same energy-type, but instead the implication would be that one separates the quality of one’s experiences from the quality of one’s actions. Essentially, it means you can take any input, suffer its blow, absorb it and transform it, and act not as a reaction to the immediate energetic quality of your input, but from the deeper position that determines the correctness of actions.

The social phenomenon that initiated this line of thinking can be described as “pussification”. A pussified person assumes it’s his right to be happy and to feel good, to live without any stress, responsibility or danger. When experiencing something other than perfect bliss and approval, a pussy whines, complains, hides from the unpleasantness and is basically useless. It is here that I realized that the Dzogchen practitioner, to whose meditational practice I took exception, might have been on to something, because my recommendation, too, would be to “eat bitter, taste sweet”. Buddhism isn’t about “woe is me, all is suffering, let’s wallow in misery and whine”, it’s about “shit happens, suck it up, get over it, get over yourself and manifest harmony, goodness, clarity and wisdom”. Buddhism has a very manly approach to things, very Roman in its stoic balance. One is to take the blows of life, remain unperturbed, and manifest dignity, justice, beauty, kindness and harmony.

I think our civilization lost this Roman aspect and, as a result, I lost my respect for it. Our civilization is more about worshiping victims, about whining, finding all kinds of “repressed minorities” to “help”, and not about manifesting great things and having faith that justice and harmony will result from the general upward attitude of our spiritual vector. I think the victim-worship and the oppression Olympics are the direct result of this general social pussification, of the expectation that everybody should have only sweetness and joy as their input, as their experience of life. But that’s not how life works. Life is basically a torrential stream of suffering, pain, disappointments, losses and humiliations. If you think there are privileged ones who are excepted from this, you are simply stupid. Buddha wasn’t stupid, he got it. Suffering is the determinant of life. You can’t eliminate it, the only constructive approach is to deal with it in such a way that you don’t drown in it due to faulty expectations of pleasure and approval. Whatever you do, shit will happen. It’s what you are when shit happens, what you manifest, that separates the men from the boys. The metaphorical boys expect to eat sweet, and whine when it’s bitter, or even when the sweetness is not absolutely perfect. The metaphorical men eat bitter, and smile, because they know that what you manifest determines who you are, not what you experience. That’s what Jesus meant when he said “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.” “But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts – murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.” (Mt 15)

What you do, what you manifest, is what either defiles or sanctifies you. Not what you experience. To experience difficulties, hardships, oppression, discrimination, prejudice, sickness, hunger, old age and death, is normal. To manifest things that are worse than what you took in is particularly evil, and causes spiritual downfall and degradation. To simply reflect the pressure is ordinary, and causes perpetuation of suffering. To shine under pressure and manifest God in this world is exceptional and glorious, and causes liberation. So take in the difficulties of this world, stay unperturbed because your consciousness has deep foundations in God, and manifest greatness of all kinds. Inhale suffering, hatred, pain, loss, agony and humiliation, and exhale clarity, beauty, justice, kindness, wisdom and greatness.

Eat bitter, taste sweet.