don’t get a grip on reality

#2 Regard All Dharma As Dreams

In the context of this Lojong slogan, dharma means the experienced world. The idea that there is nothing solid about our experience is unnerving. More than unnerving. If my experience is not real and lasting, what am I? On the other hand, I have observed myself in the last week making a very big deal of something that was not a big deal at all. I recognize the urge to sometimes make events solid that are not solid at all. So it’s not unlikely that I do it more than I realize.

I received a notice from the bank to pay a rental fee for a safe deposit box. I’ve had the box for years, and I’ve never put anything in it. I had only signed up for it because it came free with an account, but now it was no longer free. I decided to cancel rather than pay, and I looked everywhere for the keys, but I couldn’t find them. Arrrgh. This meant the bank would have to drill the box open. I guess they wanted to make sure I hadn’t left a forgotten diamond tiara inside. Drilling the box would cost me $150, and I had to show up when the drilling took place which would cost me time (and money).

By the time I showed up for the appointment, I had stirred myself into high dudgeon. To make matters worse, the bankers kept me and the man who would drill the box waiting. I ranted on and on to him, about how unfair the rental fee was, how banks are charging all manner of absurd fees these days, how ridiculously high the drilling fee was, that I was losing money sitting there, blah, blah, blah, blah, ad nauseam.

Out of nowhere, the banker was at my side. I don’t know where he came from, and as many times as I’ve been to my branch, I’d never seen him before. He felt my pain. As we walked to the vault, he said, “I’ll only charge you half the fee.” My mood changed immediately. My anger dissipated all at once, like air from a popped balloon.

I expressed my gratitude to him, but I also realized how ridiculous my behavior had been. I had gotten all worked up, blackened my day, blackened the day of anyone I had come in contact with, and probably raised my blood pressure. How silly. I am sure the banker saw me brighten. He told me he believed in doing a good deed for someone every day, and I promised him that I would pass his favor on. We had a very pleasant chat in his office later on.

I laughed at myself on the way home, and I am laughing at myself as I write this. Why do I make such a big deal about something that is not really a big deal at all? How often do I waste energy worrying or being angry when it’s absolutely not necessary (and certainly not helpful)? Silly human. Silly, silly human.

Update 1/31/11. The drilling charge has not appeared on my account. I have a feeling it never will.

Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

deceptively simple

#1 First Train in the Preliminaries

Here is my  understanding of what is mean by the “preliminaries” in this first Lojong slogan: mindfulness meditation, but also these four reminders:

  1. Preciousness of human life
  2. Impermanence
  3. Karma
  4. Samsara  (and the futility of clinging to security/safety)

The fracture (the “break” I actually asked for) and its aftermath have been an experience I’m profoundly grateful for. It has opened my eyes to what is and brought me to a new level of gratitude for my life that is hard to express without sounding all trippy. I am not even going to try here. I will say:  I have never been lighter or more easy in my own skin or as a citizen of this world.

The four reminders resonate for me more than ever because of the experience of the fracture, but I want to be cautious about becoming self-satisfied. The preliminaries are deceptively simple. There is more work to do. More meditation practice, more training. There always will be. But I do feel as if I am in a new place with a new and very different relationship to my experience.

trust in the difficult

“We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors. If it has abysses, these abysses belong to us. If there are dangers, we must try to love them, and only if we could arrange our lives in accordance with the principle that tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us to be alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience.

“How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races—the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses waiting for us to act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

“So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises before you larger than any you’ve ever seen, if an anxiety like light and cloud shadows moves over your hands and everything that you do. You must realize that something has happened to you. Life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hands and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet