Coming home yesterday I find a parcel leaning against the front door. From the monastery, with a note to say that my Zen teacher thought I might profit from the enclosed book*. Leafing though the pages, my eyes stop at a paragraph of questions.
1. Are we here to achieve or to experience?
2. To be good or authentic?
3. To build for tomorrow or dig into today?
4. To save for the perfect future or to fuel a flawed but loving present?
5. Just what is the nature of our work once awake?
Zapp! They tear into my heart, opening it just a little, enough to feel something stirring. Over the last year or so, it’s become stale, as if going through the motions of keeping me awake.
The Buddha taught that being human involves suffering (or stressfulness). Specifically, that —
• birth is stressful;
• aging is stressful;
• death is stressful;
• pain and despair are stressful;
• association with what is not loved is stressful;
• separation from what is loved is stressful;
• not getting what is wanted is stressful.
No kidding.
These are our burden, writes Bhikku Bodhi, a contemporary teacher and translator**. At the same time, they provides us with the indispensable soil of wisdom. To bring suffering to an end, he notes, we have to turn our attention around and see into the nature of its causes.
Student: What do I do now?
Teacher: Wash your tea cup. Then bow.
* Mark Nepo. (2005). The exquisite risk: daring to live an authentic life. Harmony Books, p.8.
** http://www.beyondthenet.net/dhamma/fiveAggregates.htm
image credit: www.telegraph.co.uk
Thank you Peter. I like Nepo’s work and will try this one out.
Enjoy your day.
“Don’t wait for the perfect moment. Take the moment and make it perfect.” – Unknown
Spot on, Suzanne! Just when I thought I could (more like ‘should be’) able to walk on water, ordinariness calls me back.
A dear friend asked, “Are your expectations too high perhaps? Is it not sufficient that we can take in a breath, a fresh breath?”
Yes.
Here I am, teaching/guiding dozens of people every week about paying attention, one breath at a time. Yet when I seek the same for myself, I meet restless vibrations. And become frustrated and discouraged. Duh!
The harder I try, the more agitated I become. Be patient, I would say to others. Welcome everything, including your frustration.
“What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence. What we strive for in perfection is not what turns us into the lit angel we desire, what disturbs and then nourishes has everything we need.”
David Whyte in his poem “The Winter of Listening”