Written by Jen Liu

“Letting go is like an enlightened counterpart to pushing away. Central to its essence is an intentional and non-reactive touch, along with the value of holding and accepting something before releasing it, which an attitude of suppression or resistance wishes to bypass. As though shooting an arrow from a bow, it is first holding something in all of its tension that allows for a clean release.”

Pema Chödrön teaches three important elements of mindfulness practice that are frequently referenced here at Dharma Moon: precision, gentleness, and letting go. While the path to becoming more precise or gentler can be relatively straightforward, there is something elusive about learning to let go better. It seems to defy generic definition and instruction, and can seem antithetical to the aspiration of meditating "better."

There is an addictive and oddly counterproductive potential to efforting; if you ever found yourself trying to meditate so hard that your face started to scrunch up and your posture became distractingly stiff, then you know what I mean. Our ingrained societal disposition towards productivity makes it hard to turn this muscle off when we want to. It's hard to truly convince ourselves that the well-timed releasing of effort, too, can contain forward momentum.

But in mindfulness meditation, we can observe how the act of skillfully letting go doesn't simply undo or cancel out any effort that preceded it — rather, it seems to complete it. When a discursive thought arises, precision helps us notice it, gentleness helps us accept it, and letting go helps us cleanly release it without generating further attachment through clinging or aversion.

In this way, letting go is like an enlightened counterpart to pushing away. Central to its essence is an intentional and non-reactive touch, along with the value of holding and accepting something before releasing it, which an attitude of suppression or resistance wishes to bypass. As though shooting an arrow from a bow, it is first holding something in all of its tension that allows for a clean release. We don't throw or push the arrow away; we prepare it carefully, with a balance of precision and gentleness, and let it go naturally.

The insights that emerge from this strange, spontaneous discipline of letting go manifest in countless ways. One day, it might be clicking into one’s mindfulness practice through the lens of letting go of the addictive desire to pile thoughts onto thoughts onto thoughts. It could be a humorous discovery about how trying too hard to let go actually results in not being able to let go. At other times, it could be touching into the freeing feeling of letting go of the need to be a perfect meditator at all.

How does the teaching of letting go show up in your practice?