I finally roped one of my family members into watching one of my old favorites, “Joe Vs. the Volcano.” If you haven’t seen it in awhile, do yourself a favor and take a look. It’s a lovely “fairy tale” about the awakening of Joe Banks, a guy suffering from “terminal brain fog” who faces his mortality and becomes a hero. There are plenty of sleepy moments, but the overall message is worth wading through the rest.
My favorite moment in the movie (and I don’t give anything away here) is when Patricia Graynamore, played by Meg Ryan, tells Joe, “My father says almost the whole world's asleep. Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says only a few people are awake. And they live in a state of constant, total amazement.”
I saw the movie for the first time in 1990, and that line has stuck with me ever since. “Living in a state of constant, total amazement” is, to me, what being awakened and enlightened is all about.
I only got through half the film with my daughter before we decided to go to sleep and save the rest for tonight. As I turned off the VCR, I asked her what the film is trying to tell us. “It’s the same as when I always say we should live life the way it’s meant to be lived,” said my eight-year old Buddha Girl. “We should have fun and appreciate life.”
In his review of the movie, Roger Ebert wrote, “At night, in those corners of our minds we deny by day, magical things can happen in the moon shadows. And if they can’t, they should, and we should always, in any event, act as if they can.”
The truth is, the magic isn’t just in the shadows of the moon. There’s magic in the glaring light of day, in the trees, in the warmth from my laptop computer, in your heartbeat, in the annoying sound of the leafblower outside my window, in every little thing that makes up life. When we’re awake, we know it’s all magic –and yet it’s also all ordinary. When we’re not quite awake, we can still act as if the magic is there. Perhaps that, in fact, is what faith is all about.
Buddhism teaches us that relying on external sources for our happiness is the sure-fire path to pain. Whatever we can GET, we can lose. (And we will.) If I need things to be a certain way in order to be happy, I will constantly suffer. Either I will suffer from the eventual loss, or I will suffer from fear of the eventual loss, or I will suffer from it all being other than what I expected. You get the picture.
On the other hand, if I accept life and other people on their own terms, I will not be attached to things being a certain way. So I can be happy no matter what.
But lately I’ve been thinking. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with suffering. This eternal process of wanting… searching… getting… becoming dissatisfied… wanting again… searching… and so on… Maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe it’s what keeps us moving, growing, evolving, expanding.
For instance, for years I lived in a place I didn’t like anymore. I wanted to move, but my husband didn’t. I was suffering in that environment, but I tried not to focus on it. I tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter where we lived. That happiness comes from what’s INSIDE, not the external surroundings. That in fact, we had a nicer place than most of the world’s population and I should be damn grateful.
It didn’t work. I grew more and more unhappy. I wanted more. I wanted something different and new. Well, we did finally move. Our new home is prettier, more peaceful, more spacious, surrounded by nature. And guess what? We’re all much happier. I'm happier. My family is happier. Really and truly happier. From the outside in.
So here’s my question. How do you know when the problem really IS something outside of you and that a real, physical change is in order? If your job, your home, your partner, your pajamas just don’t feel RIGHT – how do you know if it’s just your own expectations that need to be adjusted, or if you really should move on? How do you know if it’s your relationship, or your job, or your pajamas – or if it’s just that never ending, gnawing sense of dissatisfaction we all carry around from birth to death as part of the human condition?
Lately I’ve been think that perhaps suffering isn’t something to alleviate, but rather something that helps us pay attention and keep moving forward. If we don’t try to numb it, medicate it, hide it, run from it, or put on a happy face, suffering can be a very motivating force and one hell of a wake up call.
The question is – how do you know if it’s a wake up call that needs to be answered, or just that nagging itch that wiggles through our lives life to make sure our monkey minds are never at peace?
Once upon a time, a certain gentleman of royal breeding got fed up with the good life and headed out into the big wide world to find himself. Although this handsome young prince had a fine young wife and an adorable newborn son, he didn’t let that stop him from pulling the the old "ta ta and see you around" routine.
That’s the third part of Act One of Buddha’s story. And it’s the part that's always been problematic for me.
You see, I have trouble mustering up compassion for a guy who dumps his family in favor of self-reflection. Perhaps that’s my problem, not his. In any case, this skeleton in Siddhartha’s royal closet puts a slight damper on my enthusiasm and makes him less a little less likable in my book. It's one of those great unresolved questions for me: How could our beloved Buddha have started out a self-indulgent deadbeat dad?
Then the other day, I found an answer that works for me. In quite a few ways.
It came from “Buddhism For Mothers,” a wonderful book by Sarah Napthali. In the very last paragraph of the book, Sarah writes:
“As mothers, what can we make of that story of the Buddha leaving his family in the middle of the night? I asked Fu Schroeder. ‘Oh, but he wasn’t the Buddha when he left his child. He was a young prince, in terrible pain,’ she answered. ‘If you’re awake, you don’t leave your child. Where would you go?’”
I love this explanation for so many reasons. First, because it reminds me to have compassion for human behavior that appears less than ideal. We all do stupid stuff. Intentionally or not, we all act in ways that hurt others, even those we truly love the most. Even Buddha did, on his way to enlightenment. And in the longrun, there is always the remote possibility that something jerky could end up being of great value for eternity. Just something to keep in mind the next time you mess up, or someone you love pulls a fast one.
Second, the explanation reminds me that most behavior comes from positive intent. Siddhartha wanted to find the answer to true happiness. Nothing wrong with that. It helps me be more compassionate when I remember that even the nastiest behavior is a poorly-executed attempt to meet a basic human need. (Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of “Non-Violent Communication” has authored numerous books on this subject that are well worth reading.)
Finally, the last four words in the question posed by Fu Schroder at the end of the explanation offer the greatest reminder of all. “If you’re awake, you don’t leave... Where would you go?”
Yes indeed. Where would you go? There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. You can't escape yourself, and whatever you're looking for is right here anyway. It's inside your head, your heart, and your own back yard. As Dorothy said, "There's no place like home." So take off your shoes and stay awhile.
It's like the story I once read about a student observing his teacher, a Tibetan Buddhist monk. They had finished a class and the teacher went out to the sidewalk to wait for a taxi that was due to arrive. The student watched from inside the building, and began to worry as time passed and no cab appeared. As the minutes ticked by, his teacher simply stood on the sidewalk and waited calmly, without impatience or frustration. The student grew increasingly concerned about the time, while the teacher just stood peacefully and happy on the sidewalk.
Finally, the student came out and approached his teacher. “You’ve been standing here for 30 mintues waiting. Why aren't you getting upset?" he asked.
"Why should I get upset?" asked his teacher in surprise. "I'm not going anywhere."
The monk knew that where ever you go -- there you are. No matter how far we run, we're not going anywhere at all. And even though I have days when I crave solitude and dream of long stretches of quiet meditation, I know that for me, there's more material for spiritual growth in the midst of family life than on a mountaintop. Surrounded by personalities and chaos and bills and hugs and kisses and dust and laundry and strawberry smoothies and skinned knees and bad moods and so much love you can't imagine... there's no escaping the moment-to-moment, endless opportunity to face myself, to genuinely experience the law of cause and effect, to care for others, and to truly live my practice, with nowhere to hide. (Unless you're my dog, then there's that cozy spot under the bed where no one can reach you.)
So what do you think? Could Siddhartha have done it without leaving home? Or would his princely duties and all the royal temptations have gotten in his way? What about YOU? Does "real life" contribute to or hold you back from your spiritual practice? Given the chance, how would you really like to live and practice?
“Lojong” is a Tibetan Buddhist mind-training practice that uses 59 slogans to help us wake up and open our hearts. I’ve been working with the teachings, and reading Pema Chodron’s book, “Start Where You Are” which focuses on each slogan and offers practice insights on how to apply them to daily modern life.
The slogans include, “Always maintain a joyful mind,” and “Don’t expect applause,” and “Change your attitude, but remain natural.”
Last night I read the chapter on “Be Grateful To Everyone.” Pema talks about how we usually want to avoid situations and people who drive us crazy – when, in fact, these are precisely what we need to wake up and grow.
“When you’ve met your match, you’ve found a teacher,” she writes.
Pema shares a story about the Indian Buddhist teacher, Atisha, who went to Tibet. He was worried about his “blind spots” -- those places in us all that we hide from ourselves and others. He wanted to make sure he’d continue waking up and working on himself. He was told that the people of Tibet were good-natured and kind, and was concerned they wouldn’t be irritating enough to push his buttons. So he brought along a mean-tempered Bengali tea boy to drive him crazy. (The comical ending to the story is that when he got to Tibet, he realized he didn’t need the tea boy after all, because the Tibetans weren’t as pleasant as he’d been told.)
Apparently Gurdjieff had his own version of the “tea boy” too. There was a very high-strung student in his community who drove all the other students insane. One day this guy freaked out and ran away. The others were thrilled! But Gurdjieff was upset, and went after him in his car. When an assistant asked Gurdjieff why he cared about this annoying student, Gurdjieff confided a secret. "You're not going to believe this... and you must tell no one. I PAY HIM to stay here!"
Pema told this story at a mediation center that later sent her a letter.“We used to have two people here helping and there was a lot of harmony. Now we have four and the trouble is beginning. So every day we ask each other,
“Is somebody paying you to be here?”
I know we all have people, organizations, and life situations that serve as our “tea boys.” No one has to pay to be exposed daily to irritations. We don’t have to look any further than our own families, friends, neighbors, or freeways. No matter how hard we try to surround ourselves by loving, supportive influences, we still get hit in the face every single day by a multitude of things we’d rather avoid. It's just part of the human drama.
So what’s the solution? “Be grateful to everyone” means viewing it all as grist for the mill. “Other people trigger the karma that we haven’t worked out,” Pema says. “They mirror us and give us the chance to befriend all of that ancient stuff that we carry around like a backpack full of granite boulders.”
Far from wishy-washy, “Be grateful to everyone” requires fierce willpower and focus. It’s much easier to jump into defensiveness, hide under the covers, or plot a juicy revenge. It’s simpler to pour a glass of wine, turn on the radio, and put that cranky tea boy right out of your mind. Afterall, he’s the one with the problem, right?
Well, Pema says, “Do you want to always be right? Or do you want to WAKE UP?”