Meeting My Special Person

Do you have a "special" person in your life? One that my friend the Zen monk calls "your great teacher". Not too long ago I spent some time with my "special" person. My joke was he shows me how good my practice isn't.

And it's always interesting for me. Sometimes I prepare myself and I "do okay" in my assessment. No blood is spilled, no unkind words are uttered, no looks to make anyone wither are flashed, no feelings of irritation ooze from my pores polluting the general atmosphere.

This time I did "okay" for a while but as the days of our togetherness passed my patience began to wither. I did what I could. I took time alone, I busied myself. But there came a point where unkindness oozed from my pores. I said a couple of impatient things and generally behaved in ways that did not contribute to the energy field in a helpful way, you might say.

I was left with a karmic hangover. Pass the spiritual aspirin. So while I lamented a little over it, in the end my examination of the process was in an effort to see what I might do differently next time I get together with my special person or meet someone who else who possesses the special qualities that seem to push my buttons.

What my postmortem revealed was that when I finally "caved" there was a definite lapse in awareness. Someone was continually poking at me (at least that's how it felt to me) and instead of seeing it as a flashing red light to take another breath and be extra vigilant about my response, I saw a red flag and responded in an old habitual way, a little silent anger.

I also realized I was doing the best I could and that I felt bad because I had "expectations" of how I should manage the situation. The upside of remorse however is that we get to examine our actions and consider our options for future behaviour.

I realized that my next meeting with my "special" person is an opportunity to do intense awareness practice. I am almost looking forward to it. How do you work with your special person?

What Are You Adding To The Energy Soup?

This tree is just down the road from me. I call it the heart tree. It's a bit hard to see in the photo but people have gathered stones that are shaped like hearts and tucked them into the mossy crevices of this living tree. It makes you smile just to see it.

In my imaginings, one creative soul tucked in the first rock and then others joined in, searching the ground for heart-shaped stones and adding them to the collection.

The tree reminded me of a Dharma talk I heard a while back. Heather talked about how we live in a teeming energy field. Everything is alive with energy. We are part of the ingredients in a giant pot of energy soup, if you like. Her question to us was, when the going gets tough (or anytime really) it's good to ask ourselves what do we want to contribute to the energy field? What do we want to contribute to the energy soup, a bitter, slightly off ingredient or something sweet and tasty.

I loved this question as something to ask myself as I go about my day. And I had the opportunity to answer it as I spent Friday in the city doing errands; getting a haircut, doing banking, buying vitamins, and generally rushing about before overnighting with a friend. As I ate a muffin and walked down a busy street I decided to pass a fellow walking a little more slowly than I. As I passed him, he picked up his pace. This felt oddly uncomfortable, so I picked up mine. And then I heard a quiet, but not too quiet voice say, "Do you always cut people off?" In my mind I had not cut him off as I did not tuck myself back in front of him but somehow he felt cut off. Quickly my mind thought I have an opportunity here. So I slowed down and said, "did it feel like I cut you off, that was not my intention. I apologize if that's how it seemed. Really what I am doing is rushing about doing a bunch of errands." And at that point we began a little chat, remarked on the sunny day and when we parted at the stop lights, he wished me a nice day. It was my impression that I had not sent him on his way to stew about how rude and inconsiderate people are and that perhaps he even felt a bit cheered by our exchange. I felt like I had added at least a pinch of something wholesome to the energy soup. In the past I probably would have shrugged and thought, he's having a bad day and carried on.

So I offer this to you, this little question, that can be answered in tiny ways, like my walking experience or in large ways, especially with dear ones. What are you adding to the energy soup? A great thought I find, when things get a bit dicey.

The Samsara Of Home Renovations

Where do you find the Dharma when you discover hidden mold on the wall during your kitchen reno and you don't know what to do? How does the Dharma fit into a house bustling with 2 plumbers, 2 tilers, a carpenter and fallers arriving to remove some trees? Well for starters, you do the best you can. You get to see your habitual tendencies in full bloom and then you dance with them as you negotiate the chaos. You feel your way along like a blind person, carefully. You look for openings and light shining through from some other place. You try to find the opportunity in the problem. And as much as you can, you let go of what you "want". And occasionally you remember to breathe. Never helpful to pass out from lack of oxygen.

So that has been the work of the last week. Phone calls and following the thread to make sure that what we were dealing with was not toxic mold and a health hazard. And I got to see a strong panic reaction in myself that relates to anything that feels like a threat to my health. I was learning to be prudent but not alarmist, to weigh and measure the information I collected. I could see the inclination to feed off the panic of someone else who was present. And of course all the time the new kitchen I wanted was barking at my heels. And so by the third day we had figured out what to do, found someone to test the mold, found it wasn't any of the seriously dangerous types and then proceeded to remove it safely. It was an exhausting experience and everyone had several opinions on it. The trick was to weigh it all in a balanced manner, to put strong emotions out of the decision making loop.

I was stressed but with awareness! I did the best I could to work with it. I remembered to practice kindness to those that were part of the process and be thankful that I was in the position to be doing all of this. There was a serious samsaric quality to the whole experience. Life is like that sometimes! And so the house is deliciously quiet tonight as I nurse a sore throat. In the thick of it all lies opportunity, opportunity to get to know ourselves (and thus others) opportunity to take a stab at right speech and right action. Opportunity to not succumb to despair and doubt and panic. Opportunity to dig deep inside and find what Jiyu Kennett called "our iron being". Add a little faith and stir vigorously.

And did I mention that the sweetest 2 tilers broke the washing machine moving it back into place? The tests continue!

Do You React or Respond?

Today  I needed  a couple of photocopies to experiment on some image transfer techniques so I walked over to a nearby repro-graphics centre.  The young man at the counter looked very hip.  He had a purple shirt on with grey pinstripe pants and white shoes and a white belt.  He clearly had disdain for the minimum wage job he was working.  He was, shall we say indifferent to me and my requests, not so much rude, as bored and uninterested.

In the past I might have responded in kind, feeling somewhat insulted by his attitude but it has become part of my practice to notice such behaviour and rather than to react to it, to try to respond with kindness and caring.  I had asked for copies  on tracing paper which  a coworker promptly told him he couldn't  do.  When I said I had specifically called  a few days earlier and was told they would do it, so they proceeded with my request.  After he'd tried a few copies, came back for more tracing paper, gotten mixed up about how many copies of what he needed to do, I asked off handedly if it was an aggravating process.  For some reason this seemed to diffuse the situation and he completed the job, almost in good cheer, gave me a gazillion copies for 92 cents and offered an invoice and smiled.

It was an interesting exchange.  We both left the situation in a good frame of mind (no new unpleasant residue or karma created) and carried on with our respective days.  I find this scenario is repeated often in shops and restaurants where people are not particularly happy with their work situations.  Sometimes they respond with kindness and perk up when I make a little chit chat and sometimes not.  But always I know I have tried to meet them as a human being, not a server, not an object, and I have made an attempt to add a smidge of brightness to the day.

I did not come by this skill naturally.  I would regard myself as a polite Canuck but if a server was surly or rude, in the past I might have taken it personally and reacted by not being friendly back.  Isn't that what most of us do?  But taking my friend the Buddhist monk out on errands was especially instructive at first.  She always makes chit chat and even asks people's names and about their lives.  She is genuinely interested and goes out of her way to connect with them.  And it has been such an education to watch the grumpiest restaurant server warm to this treatment.  It is amazing to watch the transformation.  And kind of fun.  Now I am not her  and don't do the name or family question thing as it doesn't feel comfortable to me.  We need to make these things our own.  I am more likely to make a silly comment or tell about something related I have heard or seen, if it seems appropriate.  I adapt it my quieter, less outgoing self, still stretching further than has been my habit.

What you learn is that really the surly or indifferent behaviour is not personal and on some level people are suffering when they are grumpy or rude.  If we can spread a little good will by our simple choice to respond with compassion and kindness in the smallest situation then we have added something to the world.  We have made it a slightly friendlier place.  And we feel better for it.  We have not fallen victim to our own self centred "reacting", our self cherishing stance of "how dare you not treat me as the centre of the universe."  We are in control  and we are free when we respond with conscious choice rather than react with habitual tendencies.  We are not dragged around by our emotions.  And it gets to be a fun game or a new habit.  

We let someone in the traffic line, pop a coin in the expired parking meter .  We choose to express our sense of community, our recognition that we are all in the same leaky boat together, in small ways everyday.  We don't need to wait to do works of great philanthropy, we can start with grumpy Mrs. Smith down the street.  Maybe no one has spoken a pleasant word to her in 50 years because she grumbles at everyone.   Sometimes it's the little things that count.  A small gesture of kindness can brighten someone's day.  So perhaps it seems obvious, or not like the Dharma at all, but really that's how we aim ourselves in the direction of  enlightenment, one action at a time.

Kindness and Connection

First a little house keeping ....  Someone mentioned to me today that they were unable to post a comment here and when I sniffed around my blogger site I found that the default settings were a bit off.  I have freshened them up and anyone can post now and comments are always welcome!

A couple of things are up on my radar today.  Yesterday an event of sheer delight came my way.  I received a surprise package in the mail.  It turned out to be the most lovely green merino wool cowl (is that some sort of farm animal making a bad noise, you ask?) knit for me by a good friend of my daughter.  I had been mooning over a similar item on Etsy during the Christmas holidays and not only had Sarah remembered but she had put her nimble fingers to work and created this beautiful  scarfy thing for me and mailed it out.  I was truly touched and delighted and like a small child I immediately put it on and wore it for the rest of the evening!  Kindness pure and simple such a wonderful human offering. The Dalai Lama often says, "my religion is kindness."

 

But how often do we take the time out of our busy day to actually go through all the steps to complete a simple act of kindness or generosity.  Sometimes I think of something I might do, imagine it fondly and then get busy and forget.  So I was reminded in a very first hand way what a wonderful aspect of human connection these little treats are, maybe it's just a long distance phone call to a friend, or a real card that goes in the mailbox, just a friendly word to a stranger that looks like they could use cheering up....  I was reminded to pass it on  ....  tag you're it.

When I called to tell Sarah how tickled I was, she commented on my blog and we got to talking about how we humans are so similar in many ways, how we all share  many of the same issues and insecurities (check out Peter's Monkeymind post "trouble in paradise"  to read a powerful piece on the inner critic we all share).  Suffering is universal yet somehow we think we have some individual license on it. We wander around feeling isolated and thinking everyone else looks pretty great and has it all together .... except us.  A teacher whose name I can't remember expressed it this way, "If you've seen one mango, you've seen them all."  We're really just a bunch of pretty crazy mangoes dealing with the same little fruit flies.

Coffee today with a new Dharma friend  ended with the same conclusion Sarah and I had come to, such an important tenet of Buddhist practice.  We are all connected.  It is so easy to forget and so helpful to remember.  Because we often don't talk about the deeper issues of life with friends and family we don't know that inside we all are in the same boat together working with the same stuff, (in slightly different contexts sometimes).... but there it is once we're willing to be brave and share.  It is such a joy and relief to share and connect.

How often do we really connect with other people?  How often do we take the time and muster the courage?  Are we willing to feel awkward and exposed?  Or is it easier, safer, and more comfortable  to stay in our crusty little shells?  My new Dharma friend and I could talk about how we hardly know our mothers or other family members, that in our culture we have never really learned and practiced how to connect with people at a heart level.  And so we feel lonely in a room full of relatives, and we feel lonely when we are by ourselves.  We could remind each other that really there is nothing more important than that feeling of connection and community, something that can seem so absent in this modern world.

So that's what I've been thinking about today, kindness and connection, both of which I feel blessed to have been the recipient of.

I am not the Buddha

"I am not the Buddha."  I made that comment to my friend the Zen monk after telling her a little story about how I decided that I could only do family house guests for 4 or 5 days rather than a two week visit as requested.  The decision was made with a lot of care and consideration and contemplation.  I had to acknowledge my own limitations and my place on the path.  I knew the potential suffering that can come from hoping to act in ways, that are past where I am, if that makes any sense to you.  I sometimes wish I were more generous, compassionate, more tolerant, but there you have it.  While this does not stand against me making an effort to be these things, to aspire to higher ideals, I must be realistic of what I can pull off without getting myself in more trouble and ultimately creating more suffering and karma for all involved. It is a tricky business!  It is much more flattering to think I am kind, compassionate, generous and nice but truth is I am not always these things. Gasp!  ouch, the truth is a prickly customer sometimes!

I was reminded of the fact that "I am not a Buddha" today when I went to do my last little bit of business regarding the fender bender I was involved in the other day.  I had an appointment to see the government insurance company that determines liability.  As I readied myself to g to the appointment I could hear my self cherishing point of view that I was right....  Man, that is a hard one to let go of.  And during the interview I could hear that irritation rising in my voice as the agent questioned me in a confrontational manner.  In the end she decided I was not at fault.  I felt tired after the whole event and wished it had not stirred so much emotion in me.  I wished I could have been like the monk in the story who when wrongly accused of being the father of a young girls baby simply nods, saying "is that so?"  and accepts the baby to look after.  But alas here I am, little me, with all my stuff, attached to my opinions and point of view, easily roused from equanimity.

And while it is good to acknowledge the truth of where we are (how else can we change?)  I am learning  it is also important to cut ourselves a little slack, be kind to the vulnerable humans that we are.  It's okay to be where we are and it doesn't stand against the fact that as my teacher would say "we can do better."  I realized one thing I could do better here, was pay more attention.  I realized during the whole accident process I didn't pay enough attention to the details.  I wanted (attachment) it to be an amicable transaction so I was not as careful as I should have been.  My inclination toward "niceness" actually worked against me.  I needed to be a little more careful and vigilant.  

And always, everyday I find there is something for me to learn, something that helps me stretch further in the direction of wisdom and compassion.  So while it may not always be fun, it is always worthwhile.

This little mixed media is a contemporary take on a thanka with all the little Buddhas in their circles. It seems to go with the writing, the various sizes and colours of Buddhas speaking to our various places on the path.