Episode 159 – Our Portable Stage

When you go to a play, you see people who are pretending to be other people; they learn their lines and move about in scripted ways  •  they perform on a stage, and in front of the stage is an audience, people watching a little world unfold in front of them  •  so there are the actors, the audience, and the relationship between the two  •  Trungpa Rinpoche suggested that we’re not all that different from actors on a stage  •  he used the metaphor of a “portable stage” that we carry around with us, so we can act out our little dramas in front of our little audiences  •  like the actors, we go through life pretending — looking for applause, affirmation, recognition… maybe even an Emmy  •  this tendency is heightened by social media, where we’re all posing, gathering likes and freaking out about dislikes and unfriendings  •  do we even know who we are when there is no audience to confirm us?  •  one aspect of meditation is finding some simple ground that is not part of this game, that is not dependent on affirmation or confirmation, but is direct, immediate, simple experience  •  we can begin to investigate for ourselves: how we are relating to the roles we find ourselves in, or that we create? how can we avoid becoming trapped within these roles? why do we always need an audience? and how can we make use of such roles for benefit?  •  these are questions that might be worth exploring.