Buddha's Bible Stories

Words of the Buddha

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I was completely thrown off my game (whatever game it was I was playing) by my mother today.  So instead of speaking to the little Buddha picture I have here I will share the Dharma and Karma in my evening conversation with my mother.  And of course the Buddha is never far away.  My mother who is 94 is nearing the end of her life.  And not quite quick enough for her.  We have made our peace my mother and I.  And this really has all come about as a result of a lot of difficult spiritual work I have done around our relationship and her willingness to talk openly about her impending death.

Now tonight my mother drops a little bit of burning coal on the evening phone chat.  A number of years ago she gave her mother's bible to a family member who was supposedly marrying into a Jewish family.  That marriage didn't happen and my mother said to me tonight that there is only one thing she needs to do before she dies.... And that is get her mother's bible back and give it to me or my daughter.

Now perhaps this sounds simple.  And perhaps it is.  But there are layers of implication in it.  And my mother is asking for my opinion,  probably even my approval...  And yet I realize the need to tread carefully here.  I need to be honest.  I need to say that I see the potential for hard feelings.  I see the potential for this small action to explode in a spray of shrapnel that will leave me picking sharp bits out of my flesh for a long time to come.  I need to acknowledge how much I don't know and can never know about how people will react.  I acknowledge that it could all be projection and imagining on my part. 

 And I need to say that everyone must decide what they have to do from a place deep inside them.  Who am I to tell someone what to do?  And yet I feel it is appropriate to remind my mother to look deep inside for the answer, to make sure no retaliation is involved.  We chat about all these things several times and how sometimes we humans can trick ourselves and have a hard time looking at our own unflattering motivation sometime.  An action taken from a place of spite is always a mistake.  I feel the need to say this loud and clear.  I am not good with "well mom if that's what you need to do, go for it."  I also know it is not up to me to discourage her from doing the thing that she says will allow her to die in peace.

I also can share the wise counsel I have received from my friend the Buddhist monk on other occasions; that we need to decide what to do from our heart of hearts and don't base it on results.  We can't know what will be the outcome, nor should we base our decisions on imagined outcomes.  Our heart leads the way.  And after that it is out of our hands.  We do the best we can, as carefully as we can.  I remind her that choices that come from the heart may not always seem logical and that reason might not explain what our heart decides.

All that being said I worry that her choice will put me in an awkward position and create hard feelings toward me by the person loosing the bible.  I am not particularly sentimental about things and am surprised (but understand in a strange way) my mother's seemingly sudden pang of sentimentality over this bible, one of the few things she had that belonged to her mother who died when she was just 3 years old.

There is a strangely, weirdly awkward karmic flavour to it all.  I have resented my mother for a lot of my life for putting me in awkward positions, for creating drama and conflict  and here she is doing something with this potential  as her dying wish.  And there is a feeling through recent conversations we have had that there is a deep karmic connection between my mother and I and that somehow my mother wants to honour this by giving me the bible.  At some level I sense this.  I know there is a karmic lesson here for me to negotiate all this with kindness and without anger and resentment, and perhaps with a little grace.  Wish me luck.

The Dharma Brook is Babbling Along

When life is just flowing along, well it's just flowing along.  We  go along doing our thing.  We sit, we try to be present and kind and mindful and generous and grateful.  We get parts of it right, we get parts of it wrong but life is like that lovely little brook in the forest, just meandering quietly.

I find when I really turn to the Dharma is when the road gets a little bumpy and the stream turns into a somewhat belligerent torrent.  Is that wrong?  I don't know.  I think it's just how it is.  It's kind of like a good friend.  You might not talk to them for a while and then something happens: your dog dies, your kids are giving you grief.  You call up that old friend to have a little chat.  And you always gain some wisdom or solace.  The Dharma is like that for me; a solid, old friend, wise and supportive.  Sometimes I lean on it a little harder than others, sometimes it carries me.

So here's the small bit of life where the Dharma has been so helpful for me lately, where it has helped me negotiate the little torrent that flows behind the fences in my neighbourhood.  You've heard me talk about the "barking dog" next door, maybe once too often.  But it's a good place for me to practice.  And I bet you have a barking dog somewhere in your life: your boss, your sister-in-law??

Since December I have been listening to the intermittent barking and wondering what to do.  I know the pitfalls of irritating young people who live in rental units next door to you.  Sometimes your well intentioned words can backfire in your cute little face.  Lots of people out there are not working within the framework of the Dharma.  So I've spent a lot of time considering my options.  To speak or not to speak?  Could I make it worse?  Should I approach it as an issue of quieting my own inner barking dog or deal with the physical issues of the real life loud mutt.  Maybe if I could somehow not care I would be released from a whole slew of little things that can seem bothersome?  Maybe if I could see it as their suffering and lack of awareness and have compassion for the human condition it would be the most helpful thing.  I have been able to do that with the neighbour on the other side who sometimes  fills all the parking spots in front of the houses as some sort of angry statement.  It used to annoy me, now I just see it as her suffering when she gets up to that and know that it doesn't matter. 

Sometimes you need to give things time to get clear.  The leaves and silt swirling around in the little creek need some time to settle down so you can see to the bottom.  The other day I looked into my Dharma creek and there was the answer lying in the bottom.  Nathan at Dangerous Harvest  had talked about dealing with a noise issue in his living space.  The barking escalated next door.  Due to the fine weather both dog and I were spending more time outside alone.  And then a conversation with another  neighbour who has two large dogs made it really clear.  Someone had called "Animal Control" on her.  She said she wished the neighbour would have spoken to her and they could have worked things out.  She said she had heard that the kids next to me were pretty noisy.  So I put all the grist in the mill and came out with a little cake.  It seemed clear to me that I needed to talk to my over-the-fence neighbours.  I know not to speak in anger.  That much I have learned.

And so yesterday I caught the young woman as she hurried into her basement suite.  At first she was defensive but as we chatted about what made the dog bark she warmed a bit.  I told her about the neighbour whose neighbours had called "Animal Control" and how she wished they'd spoken to her instead.  I think the light went on for her then.  In the end she thanked me for talking to her.  She didn't look overly happy and I wasn't necessarily convinced she would take huge amounts of action about the barking.  But I feel better for dealing with the situation, instead of letting the little current of my displeasure swirl under the surface.  We can move from here as the situation evolves.  This to me is Dharma in action.  I felt freed and satisfied with my choice and each time I navigate a difficult stream with the oar of the Dharma, it becomes clearer to me how to do this.  I gain much needed skill that will be helpful in more difficult times.  I don't create new karma for myself and others by doing something unskillful, like speaking angrily or calling Animal Control or chewing on the noise bone.  I learn how to do the uncomfortable thing which can be applied in so many places in this life.

So that's the Dharma story for today kids.  It has dogs and streams, a problem to be solved, a point of tension and a resolution.  What more could you ask for in your Dharma tales?  Go ahead tell me.  I can take it.  And I promise not to chuck a bucket of water from the Dharma brook at you.